We’ve got some news today that may trouble plenty of U.S. customers planning to purchase the Samsung Galaxy S3 (S III) on AT&T or Verizon as it seems that those users will be at a disadvantage compared to those on other carriers. A touted extra from Samsung regarding the Galaxy S3 was a free 50GB of Dropbox cloud storage but we have now learned that this offer will not be extended to Galaxy S3 owners on Verizon or AT&T.
The Samsung Galaxy S3 Android smartphone has already been released in the UK and Europe and some other regions and plenty of people will be taking advantage of the free 50GB storage (48GB plus 2GB free to all new users) available through Dropbox for the first two years. The Galaxy S3 is available in 16GB and 32GB of in-built storage variants and is still not released in the US but is due shortly. it will be available on all four major carriers, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile USA and Sprint, as well as U.S. Cellular. However news that the Dropbox free storage won’t be extended to AT&T and Verizon subscribers will disappoint many people.
The news comes to us from Droid-Life and was confirmed on the official Dropbox support page via a message from a moderator saying, “AT&T and Verizon have opted out of this promotion.” There’s no mention of the other US carriers though so hopefully this means the promotion will still be available for Sprint, T-Mobile and US Cellular customers but nothing has been confirmed yet. There is a certain amount of speculation that AT&T and Verizon may both be planning their own cloud storage service and don’t want its customers to get too used to Dropbox but we do think this development may upset some potential Galaxy S3 purchasers and is not exactly consumer-friendly.
As far as US release dates go we’ll give you a reminder of the info we have so far. Sprint and T-Mobile appear to be set to release the Galaxy S3 on June 21 while a release date for Verizon has variously been rumored as June 28 or July 9 and AT&T should be ready to launch it first on June 18, according to Pop Herald. The US Cellular release is not coming until some time in July. We’ll also remind you that for now only the 16GB variant of the Galaxy S3 is up for pre-order with AT&T but that the carrier will be offering an exclusive red edition at some point.
We’d really like to know what you think about AT&T and Verizon both not taking part in the free Dropbox promotion for the Galaxy S3. If you’re an AT&T or Verizon customer and were intending to purchase the Galaxy S3, is this enough to make you jump ship to another carrier? Maybe not getting the free storage with Dropbox isn’t enough to make you shift your carrier but you feel let down nevertheless? Let us have your comments on this.
