[Galaxy S III General] ceo.mtcl:
[Oct. 12 2012 update] Benefits of International Samsung Galaxy S3 for US (AT&T) users

Hello Everyone,

Most of this information is already obvious to many users out there, I just made this information available to some new users who have a few questions about why should we (in US) buy an international phone and not a US branded phone?

1. Price: International phones are less expensive.

Yes International phones are less expensive than carrier branded version (especially AT&T). Please have a look at following calculations.

1.1 Calculation for AT&T 2 Year contract plan for 3GB data usage per month.

Optimistic price of phone = $199.99 + about 7% sales tax + $18 upgrade fee= $232 approx. (EDIT: upgrade fee is $36 now)

Price of Data plan ($30 for 3GB/month) for 24 months = $30*24 = $720

Total cost with 3GB data plan for 24 months = 232+720 = $952.

1.2 Calculation for International GS3 with unlimited data

Cost of phone to me (from Expansys) = $695

Price of Data plan ($10 for unlimited/month) for 24 months = $10*24 = $240

Total cost with unlimited data plan for 24 months = 240+695= $935.

Instructions to get unlimited data is in second post.

So International version is less expensive (952-935) by $17. I know its minimal difference but it breaks the myth that international phones are costlier than AT&T's subsidized versions.

Now here is where it gets interesting. If you are sure that you are going to use this phone on AT&T for next two years then here is one more cool thing that you can do. Upgrade and buy a GS2 skyrocket from Amazon wireless (current price $39 at the time of writing this article) and get into contract for 2 years. Now, sell it off craigslist/ebay for 375-400 and make another 300-350 bucks profit on it. Pros: more profit, Cons: Contract bound
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2. Freedom: Unbranded international phone

With $17 profit, you get an additional freedom from any contracts. You can switch to any other provider at any time.
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3. Development Support: Great for International Phone

If you are on XDA, you know that you always want a huge developer support. with likes of chainfire, indie, nitroz and more to join, we know that we are covered.

Quoting the great Entropy512

"LTE is not yet mature and will continue to be a battery hog for at least a year. Everyone who says LTE is awesome seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that even HSPA+ makes it VERY easy to hit your data cap.

2GB RAM so far has little benefit - current devices are doing just fine with 1GB

International S3 development work will be 90% nonportable to the North American mangled carrier variants. If you don't believe me - look at the T989 and I727 forums and compare them to the I9100 forum. Compare the I717 forum to the GT-N7000 forum in terms of development.

This becomes especially obvious when you look at AOSP bringups. Because the international S3 is highly similar to the international S2, the CM9 bringup for that device is progressing rapidly. Meanwhile, the T989/I727/I717 CM9 bringups are still in "alpha" quality stages due to the lack of documentation on Qualcomm SoCs and the lack of commonality with international variants.

This is one of the big keys - North American carriers are highly notorious for long delays with updates. This means that you will not see updates or kernel source for your specific variant for a long time after international variants receive updates. Now, if your carrier variant is highly similar to the international device (SGH-I777 vs. GT-I9100), the international device's kernel source release may be all your need. If your carrier variant has a completely different SoC - you're SOL."

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4. Lockdown bootloaders and AT&T Bloatware

AT&T phones have always suffered from this issue. AT&T makes it look like this: they subsidized the price of phone, they own it and therefore they can install apps that we don't want them to.
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5. Unlimited HSPA+ Data

In this section I speak for just my self and a few friends whom I know. I have stayed in cities that have LTE and also that don't have LTE. 90% of time I am close to wifi. So do I need LTE?

Lets say I am traveling for next 8-10 hours and I would really like to enjoy 'super fast high speed LTE' what do I do? Do I start watching Netflix on my phone? Do I stream HD Youtube for hours? Probably not, because I have data cap. All i would like to do is surf internet, listen to music, watch saved videos (but may be its just me)

HSPA does the job for me. I get 3500-6500 kbps down and 1500pbks upload speeds on HSPA+. It is sufficient for me to even stream videos!

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Please let me know your thoughts and if you agree or disagree with me. I will update the OP with more facts if I have missed any.