It’s fair to say that the Samsung Galaxy Note made quite an impression at IFA this year. Samsung’s smartphone/tablet hybrid defies classification with a 5.4 inch Super AMOLED screen, an included slide out stylus (or ‘S Pen’, as Samsung have dubbed it), and full phone functionality. But aside from what category to put the Samsung Galaxy Note into (Smartphone? Tablet? Somewhere between the two?), the main question left with most of us was “When will it be available, and how much can we expect to pay?” To try to answer that question, we set about contacting retailers, mobile networks and the manufacturers themselves.
Unfortunately, this soon after the announcement of the device, very little seems to be certain about how long it will take to reach the UK market. None of the major UK networks have so far confirmed that they’ll be stocking the Note, so naturally none of them were keen to divulge a release date to us.
We did managed to gather a little more information from the SIM free retailers, though. UK online electronics retailer KingsOfGadgets.co.uk couldn’t provide an exact date, but told us “All we have is ‘early 2012’”. This ties in with a report from tech blog SlashGear, who had been told that the Galaxy Note would be reaching the UK in Q1 2012.
Before you get too disappointed by the prospective wait, though, we did receive one conflicting report from retailer Clove, who told us “It looks as though it will be November/December time”. While we’ve not received official confirmation from Samsung on this date, it seems likely that the Korean electronics giant would want to capitalise on the Christmas market for their new device, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed for a late 2011 release.
So far as price goes, around £600 SIM free seems to be the general consensus. Of the 4 retailers who currently list a pre-order price for the Galaxy Note, 3 are quoting £600 (give or take a few pence), though HandTec have the new handset listed for pre-order at £575.99.
| SIM FREE: | Price | |
|---|---|---|
 |
£575.99 | |
 |
£599.96 | |
 |
£599.98 | |
 |
£600.00 | |
 |
Price Not Announced | |
 |
Price Not Announced | |
 |
Price Not Announced |
Comments:
