And here we go! Samsung announced late last night that the long-awaited Galaxy S III would hit five of the U.S.’s biggest carriers — Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T, and U.S. Cellular — this month.
Not long after Samsung’s initial announcement went out, many of the carriers in question jumped into the fray with their own announcements, so here’s a cheat sheet to stay on top of which carrier is doing what with the Galaxy S III.
Verizon: They’ll be taking pre-orders for the device starting on June 6, and were the first to reveal their pricing structure. The 16GB model will cost $199, while the 32GB model will set folks back $249, and it seems as though everyone else is following suit.
Sprint: The carrier will start selling the Galaxy S III on June 21, and pre-orders will begin on June 5 (i.e. tomorrow) for the truly ambitious. They’re sticking to the $199/$249 pricing structure as well, though there’s a bit of bad news if you’re looking to score a 32GB model — they’ll only be available online (for now, anyway).
T-Mobile: The magenta-hued carrier has announced that they will launch the Galaxy S III on June 21 like Sprint. No word on pre-orders or price, though I’d reckon the $199/$249 is pretty much a done deal across the board at this point.
AT&T: A teaser page for the Galaxy S III went up overnight for eager consumers to peruse, but they haven’t had much else to say on the topic just yet. UPDATE: AT&T just announced that they will start taking GSIII pre-orders on June 6, and that the 16GB model will cost $199. Oddly, there’s no sign of a 32GB model, but they will launch an exclusive red version of the device over the summer.
U.S. Cellular: Customers can pre-order their 16 or 32GB Galaxy S IIIs starting on June 12, but the country’s sixth largest carrier won’t actually be releasing the device until July.
Interestingly enough, it looks like T-Mobile’s version isn’t the only one to carry over the design seen on the international model — all of the press images that have trickled out today feature the tiny physical home button that has historically been axed from U.S. releases. Though the domestic and international models look very much alike (even down to the blue and white variants being released) the Galaxy S III had to have its internals swapped out before it makes its Stateside debut.
Like the HTC One X before it, the GSIII’s quad-core processor (in this case, the Exynos 4 Quad) has been replaced with a dual-core Snapdragon S4 chipset clocked at 1.5GHz. Samsung also notes that one of the devices packs support for HSPA+ 42, which means that T-Mobile’s variant will be left out of the LTE party as expected.