One day after AT&T opened pre-orders for the Galaxy S4, Samsung has confirmed what we all expected, that the rollout of the latest blockbuster device in the US begins this month with all seven carriers involved — that’s AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, U.S. Cellular, Cricket and C Spire.
AT&T is pricing the phone at $639 upfront, or $199.99 on a two-year contract, but the announcement from Samsung says that each carrier will dictate their own price and launch date, but we can expect more details “in the coming weeks” (some launches will slip into May). US carriers require time to test devices on their networks but, thus far AT&T aside, Sprint has confirmed the device for April 27 (from $249 on contract), with T-Mobile pencilling in April 24 for its online launch (priced at $149.99 on a 2-year-$20-per-month deal).
Samsung has also confirmed that a range of top retailers — including Best Buy, Costco, Radio Shack and Wal-Mart — will stock the Korean firm’s flagship smartphone:
The Galaxy S 4 is optimized for powerful performance on the nation’s fastest networks and will be available on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless as well as U.S. Cellular, Cricket and C Spire starting during April. Additionally, consumers can find the Galaxy S 4 at Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile, Costco, Radio Shack, Sam’s Club, Staples, Target and Wal-Mart.
The Galaxy S4 was unveiled in March and will go head-to-head with the HTC One, as well as the next-generations of iPhone and Nexus smartphones that are likely to be released later this year.
The device has a 5-inch 1080p display, set at an impressive 441 ppi. Under the hood is a quad-core 1.6 GHz Cortex-A15 processor, bumped up by an additional quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 chipset.
The Galaxy S4 comes stocked with 16GB of internal storage, although that’s expandable via a microSD card, and runs on the latest version of Android (version 4.2.2) with Samsung’s TouchWiz skin slapped on top.
The device also has a mighty Li-Ion 2600 mAh battery, which should do a pretty decent job of counterbalancing the smartphone’s power-hungry processors, and 2GB of RAM handling multiple apps and tasks.
You can find more details about the impending UK launch here, with information for Canada here.
Headline image via Sweetlabs / Flickr
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.