AT&T's share of Samsung's popular Galaxy S III will go on sale July 6. Its Website, however, shows only blue and white options, with no trace of the promised exclusive red version.
AT&T says the wait for its Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone is over.
Subscribers and new customers will be able to buy the phone in stores and
online starting Friday, July 6.
While AT&T announced June 4 that, like four other U.S. carriers, it
would be offering the phone, it didn't name a sales date for the highly
in-demand device until July 2.
Samsung executives have said their South Korean factory is working full-time
to meet global demand for the device, and while AT&T is finally getting its
share, the order doesn't yet seem to be complete. AT&T said in its original
press
release that it exclusively would offer the phone in red, in addition to
the blue and white offered by its competitors.
At
present, however, the site shows only Pebble Blue and Marble White options
to be available.
An AT&T spokesperson confirmed to
eWEEK that the red version will
arrive "this summer."
Sprint and T-Mobile were to begin selling the Galaxy S III June 21, but the
day came and went without supplies reaching Sprintand only a 16GB model
reaching T-Mobileleaving the carrier to say Samsung was "overwhelmed by
demand" and the pair were "working closely" on a delivery
schedule.
On June 27
Sprint
announced it would have both 16GB and 32GB models in retail stores and
offer the 32GB version online. T-Mobile's online store, however, still shows
the 32GB model listed as out of stock.
Before reaching the United States, the Galaxy S III debuted in 28 countries.
By July's end, Samsung expects to have shipped 10 million of the handsets, which
could take a noticeable bite out of Apple's smartphone market share.
The Galaxy S III features a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display, pushing the
bounds between smartphone and phablet. It runs a quad-core processor and the
Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system; has six sensors, an 8-megapixel
rear-facing camera, near-field communication (NFC) and Samsung Approved for
Enterprise (SAFE) technology; and is LTE-enabled. There's also a 1.9-megapixel
camera on the front that can be used for video chattingor for the phone to
watch the user, to be more responsive to his or her needs.
It is, very literally,
a
lot of phone, packed with features, tricks and shortcuts. So many
shortcuts, in fact, that a user's early moments with the phone can be interrupted
by pop-up windows (that can be opted-out of) explaining things that Samsung (or
is it Google?) doesn't expect a user to intuitively grasp or otherwise figure
out quickly enough.
In a
blog post
announcing the phone's upcoming availability on the AT&T network, Kari
Tillman, a product manager, said she is no exception, despite her experience
with the phone.
"As a product manager, Ive been fortunate to be able to work on the
Galaxy S III since the early concepts and am very pleased with the
results," she wrote. "Its amazing to see how the Galaxy S series has
evolved. Not only is this a gorgeous device that feels good in the hand,
but the features Samsung has introduced really make it simple to use."
She added, "There are so many simple gestures and hidden tricks that
even Im still discovering some of them."
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