That's for the Nexus series of phones, the S series are all locked

The Galaxy S3 will not come unlocked unless you buy the international version which Bestbuy will not have.

The Google Nexus series is the only exception where it comes unlocked from all carriers.

I think the Nexus is an exception rather than the norm.

the s3 will come locked to carriers, and i'm going to say 99.9% chance you wouldn't be able to buy it from any of the retailers out right for at least a month minimum.. no way they'll be willing to sell a unit without a contract not even on a month to month because they know how easily they could sell that on a contract. the cost speculation will be somewhere between 699.99-749.99 which is what the galaxy note is retailing for.

Sometimes you can get it from BestBuy w/o a contract but you gotta look around. And you probably won't be able to do that within the first week or two.

Never had too much issue buying outright at Costco. Dunno if they still do that though.

Thanks for the reply, I don't mind waiting a couple weeks or even a month, as long as my gift card works, ahahah.

Can you buy the phone outright from futureshop or bestbuy mobile? instead of signing a contract?

Nope
Dealers of course wont sell outright
but Corporate stores, Best Buy, FS, and Costco do.
Some dealers will sell the phone outright at a premium to make back the "loss"
Best Buy is a good bet

can be pre ordered online but its 750USD

Most of the retailers I've seen won't sell it outright. Of course YMMV though.

The premium fee for their "loss" eludes me. How are they losing when I'm buying it at full price? lol. Ran into that at a Telus store.

Because the majority of these stores are independently owned businesses that are authorized resellers. They do not work on a win/loss ratio as a standard business but rather on commission structure receiving credit for contract renewals, data packages, and new customers.

Selling the phone at full price is a loss to them because they are now short a highly demanded product that would almost certainly be sold to someone who wants to renew or start up new services. Although I'm against these practices, the only thing to do is to report individual stores to the cell phone carriers and create an on-going record against them.

PS: Even Best Buy and Future Shop have a policy not to sell these new phones outright. If you find a store that does, it's sheer luck and not something that is done at all stores.

Yeah if you want to get an s3 outright the best bet would be going to the few Rogers Plus stores that are remaining. Where are the other corporate stores in the lower mainland though?

Interesting, destroyed 600k blue backplates due to color inconsistencies?
Maybe they're upping the QC on this one?

......NAAAHH

you are going to have a tough time getting a phone outright at any store that's going by commission. best bet is bestbuy as they are not commission based and the staff there wont' care as much. i mean technically all places sells phone outright without contracts, but at the end of the day it's up to them if they want to sell it outright without a contract. it's going to be ymmv, coz i know my store i won't be letting any S3 go without a contract and there's already a pretty good wait list on it. IF you really want the S3 without a contract, prolly just call your service provider and get them to mail you won't as it becomes available and save yourself the hassle going around store to store or phoning around.

OR you could just switch to a company say like... wind? and buy any phone outright any time you want.

...you realize that Wind USUALLY releases phones much later than the big 3 carriers...and their models are not identical to the NA versions that Rogers/Fido/Bell/Telus carry...Usually their versions of the phone are inferior to the NA versions that gets released.

Wind currently carries the Blackberry 9790 and the Galaxy Nexus as their top smartphones. The rest of fairly garbage in comparison to most other carriers.

Uhh you can just buy a phone outright at full price from your own carrier..why would he need to switch carriers?

If I'm interested in buying the international s3 with the god almighty exynos. Where can I buy one? Any reputable online retailers?

i ordered mine from the bell store at lawnsdown they carry import phones too apparently and prices are ok if you pay in usd.

lol i dunno why you fail me, but business is business at the end of the day you need the number to show for it. if say both store a and store b have the same amount of phone first shipment. store a sells all of them on a contract and store b sells half of them on contract and the other half out right. second shipment store a will get more than store b.. it's just how company works. the bigger you are, the better your store do, the more allocation you get from the head office. that's why i suggest ppl to order directly on the phone from their carrier. solve their headaches of trying to find one in store.

and ya.. go ahead and buy one outright with wind and use it on robellus if that's what you want :ilied:

More delays for Pebble Blue

Pebble Blue Samsung Galaxy S III delayed across the UK | Android Central

^fail...has 6 s3 coming in from clove...got order delayed notice this morning..

I personally failed you because you said Best Buy isn't on commission so it's the best bet. That however is inaccurate because they are still on commission for mobile phone sales. Gross margins are often set and met by their contract phone sales and new activations just like every other store. Whether or not the employees are commissioned or not has nothing to do with it; it's a store-level decision from their GM and they will make less by not selling it to contracted customers so your chances are not any greater at Best Buy than other stores.

double posted somehow