Vodafone is the latest UK network to announce its pre-order deals for the Galaxy S III, Samsung's upcoming quad-core beast. Voda's offering the 16GB on 24-month contracts starting at £41 per month. That's not a small amount of money, but Voda's throwing 900 minutes, unlimited texts and 2GB of data, in addition to a free Galaxy S III. If you're interested in the 32GB model, which is exclusive to Vodafone for the first month, that'll set you back £46 per month. That price will also get you bumped up to 1200 minutes, in addition to unlimited texts and 2GB.
Cheaper plans are available for both pebble blue and pearl white flavored Galaxy S III, starting at £26 per month, though you'll have to cough up £149 up-front if you choose this option. If it's SIM-free that you're after, then prices are currently hovering around the £500 mark.
The European launch day is just under three weeks away, on May 29. For more on the Galaxy S III, check out our exhaustive launch-day coverage.
Source: Vodafone
Reader comments
Samsung Galaxy S III now available to pre-order at Vodafone UK
Europeans are so lucky! Sure would be nice to know why Samsung and every other manufacturer is so biased towards Europe!!! The U.S. has a large customer base.
If I understand correctly, European carriers offer the phone largely unchanged. US carriers require changes, physical as well as software wise. This requires extra time, money, and effort by manufacturer.
I am sure we would see phones much faster if the US carriers didn't change the phone. That is in addition to the changes and testing needed to use the US frequencies.
In the UK at least all phones released support every network out of the box. Every carrier usually takes every phone and the phone manufacturers don't need to negotiate - or sell - their products to the network.
Therefore it is very easy - I can choose any phone on any network and either get the phone from the network provider or even directly from one of the numerous independent retailers, with or without an airtime contract (which also means you get updates straight from the manufacturer).
As we only use GSM you just get a SIM, either pre-paid or contract and pop it in the phone. All the Networks have a similar National coverage so there is more competition.
It's very, very easy to launch a phone in the UK from that point of view - compare it to the USA where it seems every phone has to have separate negotiations and demands of the networks before it can be launched. It amuses me to hear things like "Oh I hope Sprint-mobilezon get a decent phone soon" etc.
Yeah I have to agree that I can't and don't really want to imagine a situation where I have to think if T-Mobile will get a phone I want badly but can't get because they don't cover my area. It's almost outrageous to think that as a result, in the US, they get ripped off having to pay outright for the phone as well as monthly.
Meh...not a true flagship...pentile display, average camera...ugly design, glossy plastic back...
WHAT!? £41 a month for all that ish?! And with a free high end smartphone?!? We here in the U.S. are getting RIPPED!
we are getting ripped off!
http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert/?Amount=41&From=GBP&To=USD
Um, not really. Our currency is just crap compared to Europe's. Also, we don't pay VAT if we purchase from the UK.
In Brasil, my contract is around £57 (after converting), and I still had to pay like £348 for a Galaxy Note... This plan is only 100 minutes to other operators, unlimited minutes and SMS to the same operator, and only 250MB of data at full speed (1mbps) after that it get down to 64kbps... really sucks!
Vodafone are taking the piss at £41. 3 do this for £34 with genuinely unlimited data including free tethering and loads more minutes and texts.