Samsung Galaxy Nexus UK shelf date confirmed

You might have missed this, but we actually sneaked out the shelf date of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus when we mentioned a change of release date for the Samsung Galaxy Note. However, the date has only just been confirmed by Samsung itself.

The official announcement of the date, which is now set in stone for 17 November, was perhaps pushed onto Samsung after Amazon put the phone up for pre-sale for that date. If you want one SIM-free from Amazon, the retailer is selling it for £549.99. With that in the public domain, which followed a similar announcement from online retailer Clove, it was only a matter of time before Samsung gave the official heads-up.

So far, Three, O2 and Vodafone have all announced they will be stocking the first Ice Cream Sandwich handset, but none of those networks have announced tariffs, despite it being less than three weeks before the big day. The only tariff details we have are from Phones4U, which is offered the handset for 'free' on an unnamed network for £46 per month. Pay £29.95 upfront and that two-year contract drops to £41 monthly. The other network deals are unlikely to be far from those prices.

For your money, you get first go at the Ice Cream Sandwich Android operating system, as well as some hardware with a 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, a 4.65-inch screen with 720p resolution and a five-megapixel camera with auto-focus.