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Ah, T-Mobile's illusive Galaxy S III LTE. We've known it was coming for months now, and the long-overdue device has now silently showed up on T-Mo's website sporting a $70 down payment. Unfortunately, there's no release date in sight, but a leaked internal document obtained by TmoNews shows June 5th as the official launch date, suggesting that the 'add to cart' option here is merely a pre-order option.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That seems to be the attitude that T-Mobile is taking with its domestic variations of budget-friendly Samsung smartphones. The Galaxy S III Mini (which has its own misnomer issues) is headed to T-Mobile as the Samsung Galaxy Exhibit, according to UnwiredView. The only difference from the international version appears to be an admittedly snazzy grey and teal trim makeover.
If you'll recall, this is far from T-Mobile's first Exhibit. The first Exhibit 4G was a shrunken-down version of Samsung's first Galaxy generation from mid 2011, and the Exhibit II 4G followed a couple of months later as the first Tmo phone to be sold off-contract through Wal-Mart.
It never rains, but it pours. Yesterday Samsung posted the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean source code for both new Galaxy Tab models and the AT&T Galaxy Note II. Today they're keeping the open source train rolling with the first available code for the new Galaxy S III Mini, the flagship model's 4-inch brother-from-another-mother. The 4.1 code is available now from Samsung's developer website.
If you're wondering why the GSIII Mini needs separate code from the standard Galaxy S III, remember that it's actually quite a different beast under the hood. Aside from the 4-inch 800x480 screen and other mid-range specs, it's running a 1Ghz dual-core STE U8420 processor, with completely different architecture from the Exynos chip in the international model and the Snapdragon powering the LTE version.
Now that Samsung has officially announced the Galaxy S III Mini, Phones4U has started to take pre-orders in the UK, with prices for the mid-range phone starting at £25 a month.
All of the tariffs on offer from Vodafone, Orange, and O2 offer the phone for free, although none of the plans include a data allowance over 1GB per month.
The cheapest option is available from Vodafone, giving you 300 minutes, unlimited texts, and a paltry 250MB of data per month for £25. For an extra few quid, you can bump up to Orange's Panther 36 plan, which offers 600 minutes, 3000 text messages and a 1GB data allowance for £28.50.
We were expecting this, but today Samsung took the wraps off of the Galaxy S III Mini, though, as Cameron pointed out yesterday, this isn't the same beast of a phone in a tinier display. Packing an unnamed dual-core 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, an 800x480 Super AMOLED display, and a 5MP rear shooter, this device is designed to fit in a mid-range slot on carriers' lineups.
Here's a full spec list:
Samsung hasn't shared any details on pricing or availability yet.
Yesterday, JK Shin, head of Samsung Mobile Communications, said that the company would be announcing the Galaxy S III Mini in Frankfurt, Germany on October 11th. Looks like we don't have to wait another 24 to get the full skinny, however, as alleged details of the device have already made their way to the internet.
While many users were expecting full GSIII hardware in a smaller package, that doesn't look like it's going to be the case if today's leak is to be believed:
Basically, this is just another mid-ranger that Samsung managed to create some hype around by slapping the "Galaxy S III" name onto it.
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