Samsung, KR:A005930 -0.14% the South Korean electronics major, has set a “major product announcement” for Aug. 29. It didn’t say what that product would be, but indications are that it’s the new phone, a potential major challenger to the iconic Apple Inc. /quotes/zigman/68270/quotes/nls/aapl AAPL +0.88% product.

The Galaxy S II, based on Google Inc.’s /quotes/zigman/93888/quotes/nls/goog GOOG +0.29% Android operating system, now has been on a number of markets in Asia and Europe for as long as 3½ months. Reports at the end of July said Samsung had sold more than 5 million of the S II in the three months to that point.

With a 4.3-inch screen, a 1.2-gigahertz ARM Holdings PLC /quotes/zigman/67211/quotes/nls/armh ARMH +2.23% processor, a gigabyte of RAM and 4G connection speeds, the Samsung unit is bigger and faster than the iPhone 4, reports say.

The Samsung phone will have two cameras, 8-megapixel front and 2MP rear, plus 16GB of internal storage and a slot for a micro-SD card, reports say.

At the same time, the Galaxy S II will go up against the latest Apple iteration, the IPhone 5, which The Wall Street Journal’s All Things D reports is due out in October.

Robert Daniel is MarketWatch's Middle East bureau chief, based in Tel Aviv.