Before all the crazy news was released about the Galaxy S III over the past few days we mentioned global GSM radio support was included while it passed through the FCC. Today however Verizon themselves have indeed confirmed that their Galaxy S III will have 2G and 3G GSM radios that will enable global roaming on other carriers overseas.
This doesn’t mean you can use it on AT&T here in the US (without some heavy modding first) but what it does mean is the phone will support global roaming. If you take a vacation to Fiji or the Bahamas, or head to Barcelona Spain (like we did in February) you’ll be able to use your Verizon Galaxy Nexus on global GSM carriers that have partnered with Verizon — like Vodafone.
PhoneScoop initially reported on this earlier today but the folks from The Verge have reached out to Verizon and confirmed the reports. Apparently the Galaxy S III won’t support global roaming out of the box, but will be enabled later this summer in an upcoming software update – at least according to Verizon. We’ve already heard Verizon confirm multiple phones to get the same treatment, so this makes perfect sense.
As a reminder, pre-orders for Verizon’s Galaxy S III start tomorrow and we are hearing it will ship the first week of July.
Does this mean the Sprint version will roam on global GSM as well?
It will probably have the radios too, yes. but I’m not sure if they’ll enable it
Hopefully GSM will be enabled shortly. My big switch to VZW from TMO is stalled until further news is released.