Canadian mobile network operators TELUS, Virgin Mobile and Bell have opened pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S4 today, confirming that consumers will receive the device on April 27 before it hits store shelves on May 3.
Signing up to a contract isn’t particularly cheap though. Samsung’s new flagship Android device will cost $199 on a three-year contract with TELUS, starting at $50 per month. Consumers can expect 1,000 minutes, 300MB of data and unlimited texts for that amount, although given that TELUS offers a 4G LTE service, that’s unlikely to last very long.
Upping the data cap to 600MB will set users back an additional $15, or 1GB for a total of $80 per month. Anything higher will cost consumers an extra two cents per megabyte, without exception.
TELUS also offers an unlimited talk and text plan for $100 per month, although it still only includes 5GB of data. That might be enough for the majority of its subscribers, but data-heavy Android users will be left bitterly disappointed.
The Samsung Galaxy S4, unveiled in March, is likely to be one of the most sought-after smartphones until the next iPhone or Nexus products are announced.
The device has a premium 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. That’s a whole lot of processing power.
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.
It will be available in two colors, “white frost” and “black mist”, although Samsung has also revealed that additional color options will follow alter this year.
Pre-orders for the device opened in the United Kingdom late last month, ahead of a public release on April 26.
Image Credit: DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images
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