Samsung Makes Canadian SGS3 Variants with Krait Official
by Brian Klug on May 31, 2012 1:20 AM ESTAlmost immediately after making the International Samsung Galaxy S 3 (SGS3) official, speculation started about just what features would make it over to the variants bound for carriers in the Americas and in regions with LTE. Today, Samsung made two Canadian-bound variants of the SGS3 official: SGH-i747 with LTE, and SGH-iT999 with DC-HSPA+ 42 Mbps. Both are built around Qualcomm's MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 SoC at 1.5 GHz, which we've already seen in the HTC One X (AT&T) and HTC One S. Where the SGS3 does mix things up is the inclusion of 2 GB of LPDDR2 RAM. The rest of the details are unchanged - these two newly announced variants still have the same camera, WLAN, and display. Samsung has also given the same sizes and mass, which is a bit surprising since this varied last time around. We've put together a table with some comparisons between the variants and what we know at this point, I suspect closer to launch we'll flesh out some of the obvious question marks.
| Samsung Galaxy S III Variants | |||
| Carrier | SGH-i747 | SGH-iT999 | GT-I9300 |
| SoC |
Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 (2 x Krait @ 1.5 GHz) |
Samsung Exynos 4 Quad / Exynos 4412 (4 x Cortex A9 @ 1.4 GHz) |
|
| RAM | 2 GB LPDDR2 | 1 GB LPDDR2 | |
| Network Support | LTE UE Category 3 | DC-HSPA+ 42.2 | HSPA+ 21.1 (Intel XMM6262) |
| Display Size | 4.8" 1280x720 HD SAMOLED (PenTile RGBG) | ||
| Size, Mass | 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm, 133g | ||
| Storage | 16 / 32 GB NAND, microSD | 16 GB NAND, microSD | 16 / 32 / 64 GB NAND, microSD |
| Cameras | 8MP Rear-facing, 1.9MP Front-facing | ||
| WiFi/BT/NFC | WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, NFC, BT 4.0 (BCM4334) | ||
| Battery | 3.7V 2100mAh (7.77 Whr) | ||
| Announced Carriers | Bell Mobility, Virgin Mobile, SaskTel, TELUS and Rogers Wireless | Videotron, Wind and Mobilicity | N/A (International) |
Samsung also explicitly called out a few Canadian carriers, and from that you can surmise the band support of the two variants. Namely the inclusion of AWS (1700/2100) support on SGH-iT999, and 850/1900 MHz WCDMA alongside AWS and 700 MHz LTE on SGH-i747. Based on how closely the Canadian SGS2 variants mirrored the USA variants last time around, it seems likely that we're looking at what is or is very close to the SGS3s coming to T-Mobile and AT&T in the SGH-iT999 and SGH-i747, respectively.
Source: Samsung
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Paulman - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link
Aww, come on Rupert, at least he was being positive :Psteven75 - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link
Wow, I didn't realize Android fragmentation was so bad that even a single model of a phone by one manufacturer gets fragmented into different sub-versions. Pretty incredible, really.steven75 - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link
An entirely different processor and amount of RAM is a pretty major change as opposed to just antennas (almost unavoidable) and storage capacities.Mbonus - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link
Well sort of the current nature of the beast if you battery optimized 4gImpulses - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link
What you call fragmentation others view as variety or choice... /shrug The OS is purpose built to run on a variety of hardware, just like another OS that did pretty well on PCs. :p At the end of the day the experience is still similar across these model variants and every market gets a version that suits them.With Apple's model (or even WP's) you just end up waiting longer for certain headlining hardware updates... (no 4G until multiple carriers can milk it for instance, and/or unto the current form factor can support it without a big impact to battery life) Neither is a perfect approach, it's up to each consumer to choose what suits them.
mwarner1 - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link
Well, this is a first for me - I am actually slightly envious of the Canadian/US versions of a phone!Being in the UK I have always been glad that I have access to International variants of phones, due to the lack of carrier branding, better designs, faster time-to-market, more frequent firmware updates and better developer support.
This time, however, I am a little jealous as the hardware is, in my opinion, better for the American versions. Sure, the GPU is a little slower, but this is largely irrelevant on Android (not having fixed hardware platforms, like iOS devices, means that software will more likely be written to the lowest common denominator). 2GB is more important than the GPU for me. Also Krait is generally faster than Quad A9 - certainly on the more common lightly threaded workloads!
g0d5hand - Saturday, June 2, 2012 - link
So I am not very tech savy but am following the s3 for like 2 months. I live in albverta and am no longer on contract and am tryingto decide on which version of phone to choose from and which provider to go with.I have some questions if anyone can answer. Of the three different versions on here which is the most flexible to change of carriers? I might spend a few months in germany soon and would get a plan there and also I might want to switch providers. I am looking at wind because they are cheeper and I dont like telus, dont know why just dont. and all the plans I see for the LTE providers are like 65-80 dollars a month for up to 1gb of data a month. this seems like crap.
Basically trying to figure out what version to get out off all the canadian veersions or the international version.
lobosan - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
Hi everyone, I hope someone can help meI'm in doubt about if I'm gonna be able to use a samsung galaxy S3 SGH-iT999 outside of canada??, even if I unlock the phone.
Because I'm studying here for 6 months, but after that I'm planning to return to my country where is used the model GT-I9300
Thanks in advance for any information