AT&T's sleek Samsung slider isn't the Galaxy S II after all

Last week, we exclusively reported that AT&T was planning to launch a variant of Samsung’s Galaxy S II with a full QWERTY keyboard. Well, we have good news and bad news: BGR learned on Friday from a trusted source that this handset is actually not the Samsung Galaxy S II that should soon make its way to AT&T. That’s the bad news — but it’s really not that bad. The good news is that this is an entirely separate smartphone that will be launching soon, which means Android fans on the nation’s No. 2 carrier now have two sleek Samsung smartphones to look forward to. The phone we leaked showed the model number SGH-i927, which was widely reported to be Samsung’s internal code number for the Galaxy S II ahead of launch. It looks like Samsung did some recycling with this smartphone, because test models currently carry the same model number. Also of note, the image above shows that the phone is running kernel version 2.6.36.3, which is actually a Honeycomb kernel rather than a Gingerbread kernel. We’re not sure what kind of game Sammy is playing here, but we’re now certain AT&T won’t be adding a QWERTY to the S II when it launches soon… alongside the sexy unnamed slider pictured above. Android is all about choice, and AT&T subscribers are about to have two pretty great new choices in the near future.