One month ago, on May 3rd, Samsung announced their 2012 Android flagship device, the Galaxy S III. Three weeks later it hit store shelves in Europe, and now it’s time for it to cross the pond and land in the United States. The South Korean handset vendor just issued a press release saying that their newest pride and joy will ship on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and Verizon this month. No word as to how much those guys will charge for this thing, but we do know that the minimum price tag will be $199.
Will the American version of the Galaxy S III be different from the one that’s on sale in the old country? Yes. You can kiss the quad core Exynos processor goodbye, it’s being replaced by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4. Half the number of cores sounds bad, but we’re huge fans of the S4 due to its ability to use hardly any electricity. And then there’s the RAM … Americans are getting twice as much as everyone else. That’s not a typo; the red, white, and blue Galaxy S III will ship with 2 GB of RAM!
Now we have no idea what exactly the operators plan on doing to Samsung’s software, but here’s hoping that Samsung tells them to piss off and leave it as is. There’s nothing worse than booting up a new phone and being bombarded with bloatware. But forgetting about all that for a second, let’s rewind back to 2011. Samsung announced the Galaxy S II in February, shipped it in May in Europe, and then it hit America in September on one operator, October on another, and November on yet another. This year these guys are doing the right thing by keeping everything lined up perfectly, so some praise is warranted.
And hey, if you don’t like the Galaxy S III, then get the One X.