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With the virus issues resolved, it looks like the Samsung Wave S8500, announced at Mobile World Congress, is now arriving in the UK free from any problems and is causing quite a stir. The Wave runs Samsung’s proprietary Bada smartphone operating system and is powered by a 1 GHz processor. The device costs £369.99, but Samsung Wave deals are being offered by a number of operators. Coming out on Vodafone on June 1st, it already announced amid the network’s list of “coming soon” devices earlier this week. The phone is now available for purchase in the UK as of June 1st.

Should you opt for Vodafone’s £25 ($36) per month two-year plan, which also furnishes you with 300 free minutes, unlimited texts, and a 500MB data allowance; you can have the Wave for free with some discounts, and mail in rebates. Prices begin to get a bit higher from there, though strangely enough, no 12-month or partially subsidized options are available to choose from. Buying the Samsung Wave will also get you a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes rucksack as an extra freebie, which is a nice touch.

The phone has many outstanding features many UK consumers will be excited to use and see. The phone itself is a video/photo users dream. Offering a 5 mega-pixel camera, a super fast processor, and tons of Apps to edit, upload and share all your photos and videos, Bluetooth 3.0 and WiFi. There’s also the TouchWiz 3.0 interface among the specs, plus DivX/Xvid support, a microSD card slot and a 3.5mm audio jack. To put it shortly the phone is feature packed.

The Wave sure will cause a wave in the smart phone market, Samsung cites their “Samsung Apps”, which is their app store they are offering a $300,000 contest to developers to encourage more applications to production. So with Samsungs backing the Wave is looking like one of the many in Samsungs Bada line that will turn heads.

It seems that fate is one the side of Korean manufacturer Samsung. According to the most recent reports, the issue with the micro SD card that was infected with Trojan virus software is confirmed to be present only in Germany. Since the virus is loaded in the micro SD card and not the phone itself, UK is safe from the virus scare. New buyers of the Wave are now being advised to not worry about the handset’s status as the Bada smart phone is safe from infection.

This news update comes as a major source of relief for many local retailers of the Samsung Wave smart phone. Many have already started marketing the device, touting its impressive touch screen display, the new Bada operating system and the 1GHz CPU. The announcement of a virus present in the German model immediately put a large big red flag on Samsung’s Bada debut device –not exactly the best kind of marketing for a first time phone.

Despite the fact that UK buyers have nothing to worry, people are being advised that if they have bought a Wave smart phone Germany (or had one shipped to the UK), it is best to not use the micro SD card unless it is cleaned from malware.

Samsung has refused to comment as to why the micro SD card they have bundled with the German package is infected with a virus, but many suspects that the issue may have come from the actual SD card manufacturers themselves. So far, there is no confirmation yet on what brand of cards are being used.

This event also serves as a warning for many other phone manufacturers –with many devices being reliant on the extra storage provided by SD cards and phone packages being more appealing with bundled extras, it would be nice to secure quality of accessories such as these cards in order to prevent more events like this.