Almost 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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  • Skiddywinks - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    Huh, I wonder what the reason for this is. So that they can market "Look! You may only get half as many cores, but you get twice as much RAM!" to the masses?

    Is 2GB even necessary at the moment?
  • matty123 - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    My Galaxy S2 {international version} uses about 400-500 mb RAM while idling on ICS 4.0.3 official ROM so I would say it can't hurt to have more RAM especially with jelly bean just around the corner.
  • Skiddywinks - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    Huh, that sounds quite terrible to me. If things are really that bad then I don't know how eager I am to get the S3 (UK) anymore...

    When is there going to be a review up on Anand for either/both version? Have I missed them saying they are working on one, or do they not even have handsets in at the moment?
  • duffman55 - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    Is that after a fresh restart? Because applications that can be instantly kicked out of memory to make room for new applications don't really count. My 4th gen iPhone usually has about 5-15 MB of free memory.
  • matty123 - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    No that's just standard I havn't rebooted my phone now in 562 hours according to the timer...

    However I do have about 10 widgets running on the homescreen, sync across google apps, samsung apps, amazon apps exct. running in the backround, syncing for weather updates, stock prices, sports scores. I also have about ten or so apps that I set to start up with the phone and I use a different launcher.

    I think the OP is misunderstanding I am saying the performance is quite brilliant but that more RAM certainly can't hurt, jelly bean will probably be even more RAM hungry than current versions of ICS so having more RAM is good but certainly not needed,

    I should also add I don't experience lag or any other signs of the phone running out of RAM, if the phone needs RAM it closes uneeded applications quite efficiently, even when running RAM hungry applications like Fpse for playstation emulation or crome beta I don't need more RAM, I am just pointing out it can;t hurt.
  • 3DoubleD - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    I'm loving this Canadian news coverage on Anandtech! Keep it up! There is this story, and then the other day in an SSD article they were talking about Canada Computers. Never thought I'd see the day, we're on the map!

    Brian, I can tell you follow Mobile Syrup (almost) as religiously as I do.
  • coldpower27 - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    Yeah it's great to be mentioned. :)
  • Devo2007 - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    Now if only they can get things set up so Canadians can enter their contests. :)
  • Skiddywinks - Thursday, May 31, 2012 - link

    AND EUROPE.

    Don't forget Europe...
  • RupertDBear - Friday, June 1, 2012 - link

    Can you just ffffff the right off. This is one of the few pure tech sites left we have left. PLEASE GET BACK on topic. Oh, was I shouting? This about phone tech, not about national insecurities. "I'm so glad Oprah mentioned my neighborhood" kinda crap has no place here. BTW I have lived in both countries and I find precious little between the bright people of both countries, as for the idiots, well, the US is larger...

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