Samsung's Galaxy S II Android phone
Samsung has officially confirmed that Australian models of its hotly-anticipated Galaxy S II Android phone will not feature Near Field Communications (NFC) technology.
Read our first impressions of the Samsung Galaxy S II Android phone, and check out all the details for the phone's May 26 Australian launch.
NFC is a short-range wireless communication technology that is used in many new credit cards, whereby the card can be simply swiped across a smart chip to make a purchase. This technology is rumoured to be an inclusion on the upcoming iPhone 5, but up until today we had seen conflicting reports of its inclusion in Galaxy S II devices across the world.
Globally, Samsung is shipping two versions of the Galaxy S II, one with NFC and one without. The latter is what the company has shipped in European markets, and in Australia, while the Korean version of the Galaxy S II includes an NFC chip.
"Samsung can confirm that the GALAXY S II will not ship with a NFC chip in Australia," Samsung said in a statement. "The company is closely monitoring local application and demand for NFC technology and is ready to release NFC-enabled handsets into the Australian market at the appropriate time."
Last week, Optus announced it will launch the Galaxy S II on 1 June, and mentioned the inclusion of NFC technology on its Web site, but the reference to NFC has since been removed and appears to have been a mistake.
Optus will officially launch the Samsung Galaxy S II on 1 June, and it will be available for $0 on Optus' $79 cap over 24 months. Although Optus is the only telco so far to officially reveal its plans, the Samsung Galaxy S II will also launch through Telstra and Vodafone. The device is a quad-band 3G smartphone, so it will work across all three network bands used in Australia, including Telstra's 850MHz Next G network.
Samsung is set to officially launch the Galaxy S II on 26 May in Australia, describing it as "the biggest mobile phone launch for Samsung this year."
