Samsung Galaxy S II officially unveiled

After weeks of speculations, rumours and leaks, it’s finally official, the successor to Samsung’s best selling smart phone, is here. And although we’re delighted to see that Samsung had improved on every aspect of the original Galaxy S, the Galaxy S II didn’t spring any surprises on us when it was unveiled.

In terms of hardware, almost everything you saw in the leaks and earlier leaks are accounted for save for the speculated curved screen (ala Nexus S) and slide-out vertical QWERTY keyboard that obviously wasn’t part of the final production. The Samsung Galaxy S II comes with a 4.3-inch (4.27-inch if you’re really picky) 800×480 Super AMOLED Plus display that is 0.3-in larger than the previous Galaxy S but uses less power.

The S II runs Android Gingerbread and features a 1GHz dual-core processor, an 8MP rear camera with LED flash and 1080p video recording capability as well as a 2MP front-facing-camera for video calls and self-portraits. The front-facing camera is also used for face recognition to unlock the device.

Finally, there’s also NFC built-in thrown in for good measure. All this in a package that’s just 8.49mm thin — this is the first sub-9mm smart phone in the world if there was any. The other notable improvement is in the TouchWiz UI skin, which will be version 4.0 in the Galaxy S II.

For those of you who are excited about the Samsung Galaxy S II and want to get one, don’t hold your breath. International shipments are only going out in June.

Head on to after the jump for some press shots and promo videos of the Samsung Galaxy S II.