No less than six months after its first global announcement, Samsung launched the Galaxy Note Android smartphone in Australia last night, sharing that the handset will be ranged by Optus, Vodafone and Telstra, and will also be available for an outright purchase price of AU$899.

Optus and Vodafone customers can purchase Samsung's Galaxy Note as part of a new contract from this week, while Telstra will hold off releasing the handset until some time in April.

At launch, the device is the cheapest from Vodafone, offering the Note for AU$5 on a AU$59 per month plan over 24 months, while Optus will ask for a two-year commitment to an AU$79 plan. Telstra's pricing is yet to be revealed.

The Galaxy Note is Samsung's latest Android-powered smartphone. With a large 5.3-inch display, the Note has earned the nickname "phablet", suggesting it bridges the gap between phones and tablets. Samsung includes a digitiser stylus with the handset, allowing users to "draw" on the capacitive touchscreen, annotating images and documents or creating original drawings with sketching apps developed by Samsung. At Mobile World Congress last month, Samsung announced it would make the SDK for its pen software (known as S-Pen) available to developers of third-party apps.