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Comment by mrich | Hacker News Reader

Why is the S2 only available in US now?

I can definitely recommend it, although I don't like the stock Samsung software/Touchviz that much. I put MIUI on it, which in my opinion makes it the best phone on the market (best hardware by far/software nearly matches the iPhone).

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What do you mean only in US? It's been in Europe and Asia for months now (since May).

I think what he means is that its launch has been delayed in the USA, so it is available "only" now.

I believe he meant to say something along the lines of "Why is the S2 only just become available in the US now"?

Which is obviously because your Government lets the Telecom Providers bribe them in order to screw the US public just that little bit extra :p

Maybe they use Europe for testing. Maybe because it's a huge market that request must be filled all at once. Imagine there was a problem and they had to return the devices to factory.

Europe is a bigger market than the USA, and a much more complicated one to get right - each country has it's own regulations, language, different stores to deal with, etc.

I can only assume it's the American carriers that caused the delay.

I'm willing to bet a large part of it is that essentially, Samsung lets the carriers talk them into each getting their own custom build of the phone. Both Sprint and T-Mobile US are getting a variant with a 4.5" screen, and there's rumbling that the T-Mobile variant is using a Snapdragon instead of Exynos to take full advantage of T-Mobile's DC-HSPA+ network. And for some reason, Samsung insists on using a different button layout on their US models (flat home/menu/back/search in US vs. menu/raised home/back on the Euro model).

Let Samsung ruin the international version with that silly iPhone-wannabe button layout, but I appreciate T-Mobile and the other US carriers not letting them get away with it here.

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