Samsung Galaxy S III Heading to All Major U.S. Carriers

Image credit: Samsung

As expected, Samsung's premiere Android phone - the Galaxy S III - is headed to America. After its debut  last month in London to much fanfare, Samsung's just revealed that the 4.8-inch phone will be coming to all five major U.S. carriers starting this month. AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular will all carry the new phone.

The phone will start at $199 at Verizon and Sprint; the other carriers haven't announced pricing yet.

The 4.7-ounce Galaxy S III is a top-of-the-line device  based on hardware specifications. The phone, which comes in white and "pebble blue," has a HD Super AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass 2.0, an 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, and 2GB of RAM.  It has an 8-megapixel camera, removeable battery and 16GB or 32GB of storage.

To compliment the hardware, Samsung has added significant features on top of the Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) operating system, including unique eye tracking software that won't put the screen to sleep if you are looking at it. And the phone doesn't only see you, it hears you too. Called "S Voice," the Galaxy S III has a feature similar to  Apple's Siri, which will let you use your voice to control the phone. Samsung has added a number of camera features, including "burst shot," which takes three images per second with zero shutter lag.

The Galaxy S III is likely to be the biggest rival to Apple's forthcoming iPhone 5. Apple hasn't released details on its next iPhone, expected to hit the market this fall.