Samsung Galaxy S2 to Arrive in the U.S. Soon?

Korean smartphone giant Samsung said Tuesday a "big announcement" is coming at an invitation-only press event in New York on Aug. 29, but it is unclear whether a new smartphone will make its first U.S. appearance.

"Big announcement on the 29th," the company wrote in its official Twitter page without specifying what was being announced.

"We expect to release the Galaxy S2 in the U.S. market sometime in August," Shin Jong-kyun, president of Samsung's mobile business and digital imaging, told reporters at a media briefing last month.

The company is also expected to name the smartphone’s carriers in the United States at the event.

This will come as a big challenge for Apple, which sold more than 20 million iPhones in the second quarter and is rumored to release its much-anticipated iPhone 5 sometime in September. Samsung sold nearly 19.5 million smartphones in the last quarter and will look to increase that number with the Galaxy S2.

The Galaxy S2 was released in other parts of the world in May 2011 and sold more than five million units in about 85 days, according to Yonhap News Agency.

The 4.3-inch Galaxy S2 has a primary 8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash rear and 2 MP front-facing secondary camera with video recording at 1080p@30fps. The smartphone runs on Android 2.3 or Gingerbread juice and has a Dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor, Mali-400MP GPU, Exynos chipset.