On Thursday, Nov. 8, Virgin Mobile announced that the company will offer the Samsung Galaxy S2 4G phones to its customers from Nov. 15 onwards. However, the announcement may have come a little late in the day, considering Samsung released the device in 2011 and its successor Galaxy S3 is the current flavor.

Samsung Galaxy S2, which is one of the most successful smartphones of 2011, will now make it to Virgin Mobile's smartphone portfolio. Virgin will sell the Samsung Galaxy S2 commitment free at $369.99, making the deal nearly $100 cheaper than Sprint and T-Mobile who too are offering the handset for $499 sans any contract.

Virgin Mobile's Galaxy S2 version will not undergo any hardware changes, and like other carriers the Virgin Mobile version of the smartphone features a 4.52-inch Super AMOLED Plus capacitive touchscreen display with 800 x 480 pixels resolution at 217 pixels per inch (ppi). The device sports an 8-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash.

The Galaxy S2 will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) out of the box. Virgin Mobile stated the smartphone phone will use the carrier's 4G network. The Galaxy S2 is the second 4G phone to come to Virgin Mobile. The first 4G handset was the HTC EVO V, which the carrier sells for $239.99 online.

The smartphone market is currently flooded with an array of entry-level to top-end smartphones that run on the latest operating systems from Android and Apple. Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 (WP8) devices have also started to make their way to the consumer space. Even though Samsung leads the Android smartphone market, older models have made way for newer offerings from the company.

Samsung Galaxy S2 was one of the most popular smartphones in 2011 and its successor, the Galaxy S3, has outpaced all other Android smartphones in the market to become the company's best-selling device.

Virgin Mobile customers would have welcomed the current announcement if the Galaxy S2 had made an appearance on the carrier's network last year, but with the successor Galaxy S3 still selling like hot cakes, time will tell if Virgin Mobile customers will take bait and grab the Galaxy S2 instead.