Yesterday Samsung announced the AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile versions of their hugely popular Galaxy S II. Curiously, Samsung didn’t let folks play around with the T-Mobile variant, and while they said the device sports a 1.2 GHz processor, they didn’t exactly want to talk about who makes it. Now why do you suppose that is? Many of you might not know this, but Samsung is also a huge component supplier. They make screens, memory, and even processors. Both the AT&T and Sprint Galaxy S II have the Samsung Exynos 4210 processor inside; the AT&T variant, just like the European model, will be able to hop on HSPA+ networks, but only at 21 Mbps speeds. In order to satisfy the needs of T-Mobile, who would like to show off what their 42 Mbps HSPA+ network is capable of delivering, Samsung had to bite their lip and shove a competitor’s solution inside their flagship. Can you see why they wanted to hide that fact?
All of this is of course speculation at this point, but don’t be too surprised when people tear apart the T-Mobile version of the Galaxy S II when it launches and discover some Qualcomm silicon inside. Will mobile enthusiasts be picky about which Galaxy S II they should pick up? Benchmarks show that Samsung makes chips that beat Qualcomm in almost every benchmark thrown at them, but really, would you sacrifice high throughput just to get a few more frames per second in Angry Birds? If you’re the gaming type then you should be using an iPhone anyway; no offense to our Android readers.
If our hunch is correct, then we’re hugely excited, because that means the T-Mobile Galaxy S II is just going to be the first of many smartphones that will be hitting the market supporting the fastest version of HSPA+ currently deployed by operators all over the world.
[Additional reading: Anandtech]
[Image via: Engadget]