With Windows Phone 8.1 now free, we may start seeing more announcements like this: Verizon’s just put the Samsung ATIV SE handset up for pre-order. As we saw in an earlier leak, it’s essentially a high-spec Galaxy S4 with Windows Phone 8 instead of Android. Though that’s been superceded by the Galaxy S5 on Android, the internals are still not too shabby, especially for a WP8 handset: a 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 quad-core CPU, LTE, 2GB of RAM, a 16 13-megapixel camera and a 2,600mAh battery.
Verizon quietly launched the Samsung ATIV SE smartphone on its site recently, and the silent reveal comes as no surprise. The device runs the current Windows Phone 8 operating system, instead of Windows Phone 8.1 which has been grabbing headlines all week. We hope, based on its specs, that it will get the update rather quickly, however, especially since plenty of other older phones will be upgraded. Speaking of specs, the Samsung ATIV SE offers a 5-inch Full HD display, a quad-core processor clocked at 2.3GHz, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage (up to a 64GB microSD card), a 2,600mAh battery, a 13-megapixel camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera.