Samsung Galaxy S II set to take on iPhone 5

Holding out for the iPhone 5? There's some strong temptation coming out of South Korea at the end of the month: the Samsung Galaxy S II.

An announcement for the super-slim, super-powerful, and super-popular Android smartphone is expected on August 29. Samsung sent out invitations for a "major product announcement" in New York that day and on Friday, Samsung Mobile U.S. tweeted: "Samsung Update: Hey Guys! Big announcement on the 29th ; )"

The Samsung Galaxy S II is Samsung's fastest- selling smartphone to date, based on its April debut in South Korea and parts of Europe, selling one every three seconds between April and July.

It's unclear exactly how the carriers will tweak the phone for their respective networks, but in his review, mobile analyst Sascha Segan couldn't stop raving over the "shockingly slim" unlocked version sold by AT&T for $660.

The Samsung Galaxy II sports a dual-core 1.2-GHz processor (expected to be Samsung's own Exynos processor or a Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset), a brilliant 800-by-480 Super AMOLED Plus touch screen, 8-megapixel rear-facing and 2-megapixel front-facing cameras, 4G support, and at the time, shipped with Android 2.3.3. See the slideshow below for more views.

Based on Internet chatter, the Galaxy S II will be renamed by carriers to the Galaxy Within on Sprint, the Galaxy Stratosphere on Verizon, and the Galaxy Attain on AT&T.

Perhaps the strongest sign of the Samsung Galaxy S II's threat to Apple iPhones is that Apple is aggressively seeking to ban the Android phone around the world for "slavishly copying" the iPhone. Last week, the International Trade Commission agreed to hear Appl e's argument for banning the Galaxy S II and Gal axy Tab 10.1.

This article, written by Sara Yin, originally appeared on PCMag.com and is republished on Gear Live with the permission of Ziff Davis, Inc.