Samsung Stratosphere II touching down at Verizon in 'coming weeks'

Samsung Stratosphere II
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Like an incoming comet, the Samsung Galaxy Stratosphere II is speeding toward Verizon Wireless stores.

The Stratosphere II was designed with the traveling business people in mind, providing a number of security and connectivity tools to keep company and private info safe, while housing a few entertainment options for those long layovers.

In other words - it's a valiant mix of business and pleasure.

The specs

The Stratosphere II runs Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich with a 1.2GHz dual core processor and boasts a 4-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen plus slide-out QWERTY keyboard, ideal for pounding out quick emails.

The phone has some good connectivity options as well. It's got a speedy 4G LTE wireless connection. There's also built-in Virtual Private Network connectivity and support for multi-vendor Mobile Devices Management.

It's a global phone, able to make calls or send emails from more than 200 countries.

The Stratosphere II secures its data with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and on-board AES 256-bit encryption, meaning it's ideal for securely transmitting information, whether sensitive corporate data or private personal info.

Movie store on the go

As any business traveler knows, there's always plenty of down town on any given trip, and the Stratosphere II feels the pain of long layovers and flight delays.

The Stratosphere II is connected to the Samsung Media Hub to help pass the otherwise tiresome time. Users can rent or buy movies from the hub to watch right on the phone.

It also comes with near-field communications (NFC) capability. NFC allows users to share photos and videos with other NFC devices, or connect it to Google Wallet to help make purchases.

Yes, the Stratosphere II is deeply committed to mixing business with pleasure, just like a playboy CEO or the mullet.

The phone will be available online or from Verizon stores "in the coming weeks." It will cost $179.99, but a $50 mail-in rebate brings the price down to about $130.