Hasta La Gadget!

Based on Samsung’s hacker-friendly track record, you’d generally expect one of it smartphones to come with an unlocked bootloader, making it easy to update or tweak with unofficial ROMs. That’s not the case with Verizon’s imminent version of the Galaxy S III, however. As the folk at XDA know only too well, this particular iteration of Sammy’s flagship comes with a sealed bootloader, which makes it resistant (though not impervious) to hackery.

Of course, Sammy has nothing to gain from snubbing the modding community in this way, so it stands to reason that VZW pushed the Korean manufacturer to supply them with a locked bootloader — despite the fact that all other variants have been left open. We’ve reached out to Big Red for comment, but in the meantime a clever soul over at Rootzwiki claims they’ve already found a workaround for root access. (At this point, though, we’d better provide our usual disclaimer: be very careful before you poke around in there, because going up against a locked bootloader can be risky. The apparent safety of modern life is just a shallow skin atop an ocean of blood, guts and bricked devices.)

Verizon Galaxy S III has locked bootloader (but it’s been rooted anyway) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 Jul 2012 08:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung’s current US trinity is now complete: the AT&T Galaxy S III is sitting on store shelves. After the somewhat bumpy launch, it’s possible to traipse by any of Big Blue’s stores and pick up the Android 4.0 flagship in marble white or pebble blue for $200 on a contract. It’s the definitive GSM version for the US, with LTE giving it an edge over the HSPA+ T-Mobile model; we just wish there was an AT&T variant with 32GB of storage built-in, although that’s nothing a microSD card won’t fix. We just need to wait for US Cellular and Verizon to complete the launch and put Nature UX in seemingly every pocket.

PSA: Samsung Galaxy S III for AT&T now in stores originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Jul 2012 19:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung’s complete earnings results for the April – June 2012 period won’t come out until July 27th, but Reuters reports its early guidance to investors estimates the company’s profit at a record 6.7 trillion won ($5.9 billion). That’s mostly due to strong sales of the ever-expanding (and increasingly targeted by lawsuits) line of Galaxy smartphones. Sales forecasts are slightly below earlier estimates, and while there’s no specific numbers for each division, a Bloomberg breakdown of analyst predictions suggests there should be more good news to go around later this month.

Continue reading Samsung expects record earnings for Q2 thanks to all those Galaxy phone sales

Samsung expects record earnings for Q2 thanks to all those Galaxy phone sales originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Jul 2012 20:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s an argument to be made that Samsung’s Galaxy S III is the best Android phone on the market today, but that doesn’t mean that its formula can’t be improved upon.

Case in point: now the Galaxy S III has wormed its way around the globe, Samsung is preparing to launch a version of its flagship handset that outshines the both the international and U.S. models, thanks to some craftily combined hardware.

The new version of Samsung’s LTE-friendly Galaxy S III — which is expected to land in Korea on July 9 — sports both a quad-core Exynos processor and support for LTE service from carriers SK Telecom, LG U+, and KT. To round out the package, Samsung has also thrown in 2GB of RAM to match the “future-proof” U.S. model. The remainder of the new S III’s spec sheet is the same as that of the original, so I won’t rehash those little details here.

In short, this version of the Galaxy S III is the one to covet — just don’t expect it to make an appearance in our neck of the woods for a little while.

Combining quad-core processors and high-speed LTE radios may seem like the next logical step in the way for smartphone spec supremacy (and you’d be right to think so), but making it happen is a process that’s easier said than done. You see, quad-core devices like the HTC One X and the Galaxy S III tend to get futzed with as they jump from market to market. One of the major concessions that HTC and Samsung had to make when they brought their respective phones to the U.S. is that they couldn’t have both a quad-core chipset and an LTE radio onboard because of compatibility issues.

Both companies ended up swapping into dual-core chipsets instead of sacrificing high-speed data support, and their choice has paid off — neither dual-core device is significantly slower than its quad-core counterpart, and we consumers get to watch cat videos on YouTube that much faster. That said though, companies like Samsung and NVIDIA (purveyors of the popular Tegra series chipsets) aren’t going to stop pushing their quad-core offerings, and now that they’re figuring out how to make them jibe with LTE, the competition among top-tier handsets is poised to heat up even more.

In regards to the Samsung Galaxy S III, Verizon Wireless has been very vague about its “coming weeks” launch window, but it’s become much more specific now: July 10, to be exact. The flagship device will be hitting both online and brick-and-mortar stores on that day, though only the 16GB model is going to be in retail stores at first (the 32GB will be available online, but won’t get to stores until — you guessed it — the “coming weeks”). The phone will come in both white and blue — the same color selection we’ve seen on Sprint and T-Mobile. As for pricing, the 16GB version will cost you $200, while the 32GB will be $250. The press release is just below, if you want to check it out.

Continue reading Samsung Galaxy S III hits Verizon shelves on July 10

Samsung Galaxy S III hits Verizon shelves on July 10 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Jul 2012 14:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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