The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 will go on sale Monday

KOREAN PHONE MAKER Samsung has announced that its Galaxy Note 2 smartphone will make its debut in the UK on Monday, a day earlier than we were expecting.

According to Samsung, the large 5.5in smartphone will be available from its flagship store at London's Westfield in Stratford City, as well as at all of the major UK mobile operators, on Monday 1 October. Samsung didn't announce pricing, but Phones 4U has revealed that the handset will fetch around £41 a month on a two year contact or can be picked up for £500 SIM free.

"We were delighted by the hugely positive response we received when we first announced the Galaxy Note II at IFA back in August," said Simon Stanford, VP of Samsung UK.

"The Galaxy Note II is a whole new level of innovation and we are confident users are going to enjoy the updated features and design of our latest Galaxy device when it hits the shelves on the 1st of October."

The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 will be the first smartphone to go on sale in the UK running Google's Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system, which will come skinned with Samsung's Touchwiz user interface. The handset also features a 5.5in HD screen with a stylus, a 1.6GHz quad-core processor, an 8MP camera with HD 1080p video, the choice of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB internal storage options and a large 3,100mAh battery.

Check out our Samsung Galaxy Note 2 hands-on review. µ