Hasta La Gadget!

Released this week in Hong Kong, Samsung's new Galaxy S II may be available soon worldwide. Photo courtesy of Samsung

Samsung this week released an upgrade for its most popular “Galaxy” smartphone in Hong Kong, following its launch in Europe.

The Wall Street Journal this week reported on the release of the Samsung’s Galaxy S II smartphone in Hong Kong. Samsung released the handset in Europe in early May.

It’s unclear when we’ll see the smartphone in the United States. A Verizon Wireless spokeswoman misspoke when she told Computerworld that the Galaxy S II would be available some time in July. The carrier retroactively amended the statement, saying that the spokeswoman was actually referring to the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

However, considering that Samsung just gave a handful of developers free Galaxy S II phones, and the smartphone is already releasing in other parts of the world, it’s safe to assume the U.S. release isn’t very far off.

As the successor to Samsung’s highly successful Galaxy S device, the S II has big shoes to fill. Samsung sold over 10 million of the original Galaxy S phones, carried by all four of the big U.S. carriers.

The Galaxy S II is a major update to its now-dated younger brother. It’ll have all the accoutrements customary to recent smartphone debuts — front-and back-facing cameras, 1080p video with HD output capability, and up to 32 GB SD card support.

And of course, it’s touting a beefy 1.2-GHz dual-core processor, Samsung’s first phone to do so. It’s a timely arrival, too. Competitors LG, HTC and Motorola all already have dual-core smartphones available for purchase.

As the veracity of the release is still up in the air, we’ve got no price details. It’ll most likely be available somewhere in the $200-$300 dollar range with a two-year contract on Verizon’s network.