Samsung has launched its white version of the Galaxy Note smartphone in the UK.

The handset, which runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, was announced in November but is selling now at John Lewis, who struck a deal with Samsung for £599, while other retailers will be following suit in some time.

Earlier at CES 2012, Samsung had announced white and black versions of the Galaxy Note.

Online retailer Clove will be selling the device for £594 from February 6 onwards.

Samsung Managing Director UK Simon Stamford said the white Galaxy Note is an addition to the Samsung family of devices, and comes as a part of the company’s efforts to bring the best to customers.

The first 100 customers to buy the smartphone will be entitled to £250 worth of music, films and e-books free.

The vanilla-coloured handset comes with a 5.3in Super AMOLED display screen, a rear-facing 8MP camera, powered by a 1.4GHz dual-core processor.

The smartphone has 1GB of RAM and the on-board memory comes with a choice of 16GB and 32GB.