Samsung Galaxy S II Not Sporting a QWERTY Keyboard for AT&T After All?

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A few days ago we heard that AT&T’s future Galaxy S II version, also rumored to be called the Galaxy Attain, will come with a full QWERTY slide-out keyboard. Now we hear that the handset in question isn’t the Galaxy S II, but instead we’re looking at a brand new Samsung Android smartphone.

We were not surprised to hear that an U.S. carrier may want a customized Galaxy S II version to pitch to its subscribers. Last year’s Epic 4G was in fact a Galaxy S smartphone specifically conceived for Sprint. The Epic 4G came with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and 4G WiMAX capabilities, which are extra features that its U.S. and worldwide brothers lacked.

But BGR has it “from a trusted source” that the Samsung SGH-I927 is not AT&T’s Galaxy S II model. That means AT&T will have a regular candybar Galaxy S II version, which is pretty much in line with a previous rumor that suggested that the mobile operator will have in its inventory its both a Galaxy S II slider and a regular version later this year.

The SGH-I927 slider will also be launched with AT&T at a yet to be disclosed date although we have no idea what it will be called and when it will get official. But considering how long it took Samsung and Verizon to reveal the name of the Droid Charge, we may be in for some waiting for an actual product name. Since we’re looking at a new device, and not a custom job made for just one American carrier, we may see other mobile operators interested in selling it, although it’s too early to tell what Samsung’s intentions are with this baby.

The image above shows us that the device is running Android 2.3.4, something we already expect new Android devices to offer right out of the box, but also a kernel version (2.6.36.3) that appears to be a Honeycomb kernel. Our curiosity has been piqued, does anyone have any info regarding this fresh Galaxy S II-like smartphone?