Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy R, a cheaper alternative to its Galaxy S2 smartphone, although you can’t say it’s a dwarfed version, as it’s still packed with a dual-core.

Samsung and Nvidia this week teamed up to officially unveil the Tegra 2-powered Galaxy R. Positioned as a cheaper alternative to the Galaxy S2, the Samsung Galaxy R was first revealed in July and features a 1GHz Tegra 2 chipset, a 4.2-inch LCD touchscreen display, a 5-megapixel camera (720p HD video capture and 1080p full HD playback), a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video calling, 8GB of storage, and Gingerbread.

“Samsung’s newest super phone shows off Tegra’s multimedia power, and is a great example of what consumers expect from one of the world’s top phone makers,” said Michael Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia’s mobile business.

The Galaxy R is already available in Sweden and will launch in North and Eastern Europe, South East and West Asia, Middle East Asia, and China soon. No word on country-specific release dates or pricing. Check out a hands-on with the Galaxy R below!

For those interested in comparing, the Galaxy S2 boasts a dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor, a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera (1080p@30fps), a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, up to 32GB of storage, and Gingerbread.

Now that Samsung has two versions of dual-core phones, how will Apple response to this? Will their iPhone sidekick provide enough punch to this Galaxy R?

SOURCE via Nvidia