Earlier today we covered EE's big 4G LTE launch, reporting that the Samsung Galaxy S III would be one of the select few handsets available on the high-speed service from launch.
But that's not all – turns out that the networking speed won't be the only part of the SGS3 that'll be a step up from the mainstream variant, but the operating system too: the Samsung Galaxy S III 4G will ship with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean pre-installed.
So says the marketing material released around the big EE launch, which not only confirms the presence of Jelly Bean, but which also reveals the high-flying handset will be available in an exclusive titanium grey colour – one of the quartet of new Galaxy S III colours we've been hearing rumours about lately.
As for Android 4.1, the EE announcement doesn't say anything about exclusivity, so there's no reason to believe 4G subscribers will get their hands on Jelly Bean before existing SGS3 owners. The leak of a seemingly final build of the firmware update over the past few days suggests an official announcement isn't far off.
There is one aspect of the Galaxy S III 4G that is worth celebrating, however, and it's quite possibly the first time 4G subscribers in the UK will have something to boast about to US mobile users, who have had 4G for a while now.
While the Galaxy S III LTE has had to drop two of its processor cores to play nice with the US networks, our own 4G-friendly version will pack the same quad-core 1.4GHz processing punch as the non-LTE model, making it surely the fastest smartphone in the UK. Well, at least until tomorrow.
