Without even a press release, U.S. Cellular sneaked in the budget friendly Samsung Galaxy Axiom which costs $79.99 in its Android smartphone portfolio.

With the Galaxy Axiom's close resemblance to the Galaxy S3 Mini it is speculated that the smartphone is the U.S. version of the Galaxy S3 Mini.

"Samsung Galaxy Axiom is available for only $79 with a new two year contract or $399 unlocked. The new handset has specifications that are similar to the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini, so this could actually be the US version of the handset," reported Phones Review.

The U.S. Cellular version of Galaxy Axiom features a 4-inch TFT LCD display with a WVGA resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. A dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor clocked at 1.2GHz powers the Galaxy Axiom. It should be noted here that the processor of the Galaxy Axiom is slightly faster than the Galaxy S3 Mini, which has a 1GHz dual-core processor.

The handset measures 4.79 x 2.51 x 0.47 inches and weighs 4.80 ounces and includes 4GB of on-board storage that can be expanded by a further 32GB using a microSD card slot. Samsung released the Galaxy S3 Mini with 8/16GB internal storage option. The Galaxy Axiom also includes 1GB of RAM.

The Galaxy Axiom is equipped with a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera and a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera. With the release of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean to various Samsung smartphones, users may hope that the Galaxy Axiom has the latest operating system. However, the device will run on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) operating system.

The Galaxy Axiom includes Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Near-Field Communication (NFC) capabilities.

With a pocket friendly option on offer, Samsung seems to be on track to attract customers from all market sections with its wide variety of smartphones. However, it remains to be seen if the Galaxy Axiom can find itself a space in the highly competitive smartphone market.