With the Samsung Galaxy S2 still winning accolades all over the shop, it was natural that Samsung was going to capitalise on this technology and release another version of the smartphone – albeit one that's specs aren't quite as impressive.
Enter the Samsung Galaxy R; a fine addition to Samsung's portfolio and one that tries to copy much of what the S2 delivers.
After checking out the phone at IFA 2011, we did notice some differences between the Galaxy R and its bedfellow. For a start it is not as light or as thin as the S2 – the chassis has a touch more bulk (at 0.04 inches) to it and is made from plastic, with a brush metal removeable back that hides the battery.
Looks-wise, this gives the handset more of a professional finish than the Galaxy S2.
Flick the screen on, though, and the Galaxy R isn't so impressive – instead of a Super AMOLED screen, what you get is a 4.2-inch Super LCD Screen, which is not only lower quality it is smaller too. It's only 0.1-inch of a difference but you know what they say?
Underneath the hood the specs have also changed. On board is a 5MP camera, compared to the S2's 8MP sensor, and a 1GHz Tegra 2 chip has been added and the 1.2GHz chip of the S2 has been taken out.
This does mean, though, that Tegra 2 games will be at your fingertips with the Samsung Galaxy R.
All of these changes sound big, but quality wise they hardly seemed to affect the Galaxy R in our hands on with the device.
Even though resolution wasn't as crisp as on a Super AMOLED display, colours still pinged when we watched demo video on the unit.
The Samsung Galaxy R is up to date too - it has been given Android 2.3 and is also draped in Samsung's TouchWiz UI. All of this worked great on the model we were fondling.
The Galaxy R was swift too. We tried to catch it out with quick loading apps, clicking back to the home screen, consistently swiping through screens and we found no lag whatsoever.
In short, Samsung seemed to have trimmed the edges of the specs of the Samsung Galaxy R, rather than cut corners.
There is no Samsung Galaxy R UK release date or pricing as of yet, but we are really hoping that Samsung doesn't see fit to add a similar price to this handset as the Galaxy S2.
It may look that little bit nicer, but the features are slightly compromised because of it. If the price reflects this, then the Galaxy R may well be a winner.
