[Official release date] Sprint Samsung Galaxy S10 5G launch imminent as firmware goes live

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Original story (published on June 13, 2019) follows:

If you are in the US and want to taste the bleeding edge superfast 5G network, then your choices are kinda limited. While European users can easily buy the 5G variant of OnePlus 7 Pro or the Mi MIX 3 5G, US people have to rely on their carriers.

The first commercially available 5G phone, i.e. the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G is available on US soil for quite a few months, but there is a catch! Verizon secured the exclusive rights to market the phone for the initial period, so users tied with other wireless carriers are out of luck.

Well, AT&T has finally launched the 5G variant of Galaxy S10, but not for the regular users. Yes, you read that right – the phone is reserved for AT&T Business customers as well as the members of the AT&T Developer program for now.

On June 17, AT&T will begin making the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G available to AT&T Business customers and 5G developers through the AT&T Developer Program. This innovation ecosystem will kickstart the next generation of connected experiences and help define what 5G can do for everyone.

For a limited time, businesses can order the Galaxy S10 5G with 256GB internal memory through their AT&T account representatives for $999.99, the same price as our 128GB LTE Galaxy S10+.

(Source)

On the other hand, Sprint has listed the Galaxy S10 5G on their website for a while, but the exact release release date is still uncertain. Guess they are busy fixing their network infrastructure to avoid the data connection issues that were observed with the regular LTE models of Galaxy S10.

Although we can’t speculate the exact date, but PiunikaWeb has got their hands on a strong evidence that suggests the imminent arrival of the 5G variant of S10 on Sprint’s network. To be precise, the first firmware of the Sprint branded Samsung Galaxy S10 5G is live in Samsung OTA servers.

As per the drill, XDA user iBowToAndroid has also updated his repository of flashable firmware builds for the US Galaxy S10 5G variant. The internal version number of Sprint model is SM-G977P, but the both the Verizon and AT&T models are tagged as SM-G977U.

The Verizon and AT&T model are both G977U, and G977P is the Sprint model. Firmware packages for AT&T and Verizon are comprised of the 4 base files plus a USERDATA. It appears that even though they’re both U models, they will each be getting their own distinct updates. For example, we have G977UUCU1ASEM for AT&T but G977UVRU1ASE8 for Verizon. The CSC files also specifically have “ATT” and “VZW” in them.

Unlike the LTE models, there will not be any ‘unlocked’ variant of Galaxy S10 5G in the US. We are not sure if you can cross-flash or rebrand a Verizon S10 5G as Sprint or not, so take extra precautions if you’re planning to do so.

Sprint has officially declared the release date of Samsung Galaxy S10 5G – it’s June 21.

Sprint (NYSE: S) today announced the June 21 availability for its third 5G device – Samsung Galaxy S10 5G. It will deliver blazing-fast speeds within Sprint’s True Mobile 5G network.

Galaxy S10 5G will initially be available to customers in the first four 5G markets that launched in late May – Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Kansas City. They will then be available in Sprint’s other 5G markets – Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Phoenix and Washington, D.C. – in the coming weeks.

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