# Japanese Galaxy S3



## Omegaclawe (Dec 29, 2012)

So... I'll be going to Japan for at least two years... I figure it's probably worth getting a contract there and the S3 easily looks like the best phone available.

However, I will be making trips back to the US, and therefore would like an unlocked SIM, rooted phone, and a custom ROM, and near as I can tell, exact methods of doing so can vary by carrier... and there's not a clear guide for any of these things for the Japanese versions.

Does anyone know if it's better/easier to do this with a specific carrier (NTT or KDDI), or if there's something I've overlooked? I might be able to venture into uncharted territory and do it myself, but... if anybody's done it before, no point in reinventing the wheel.


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## Goose306 (Sep 12, 2011)

Omegaclawe said:


> So... I'll be going to Japan for at least two years... I figure it's probably worth getting a contract there and the S3 easily looks like the best phone available.
> 
> However, I will be making trips back to the US, and therefore would like an unlocked SIM, rooted phone, and a custom ROM, and near as I can tell, exact methods of doing so can vary by carrier... and there's not a clear guide for any of these things for the Japanese versions.
> 
> Does anyone know if it's better/easier to do this with a specific carrier (NTT or KDDI), or if there's something I've overlooked? I might be able to venture into uncharted territory and do it myself, but... if anybody's done it before, no point in reinventing the wheel.


Depends on the S3 variant you go with.

The easiest path will be to get an International variant as you can easily just swap SIMs to swap your carriers. No CDMA/LTE so in the US you're probably looking at AT&T/T-Mo for your carrier.

Most if not all the US variants I believe are global-ready (you can probably verify this with a quick google search), but with varying degrees of difficulty regarding actually doing so. The real core difference you are looking at spec-wise is whether you want a quad-core with a single gig of RAM (international) or a dual-core with two gigs of RAM (domestic variants) the US variants are also a bit more friendly to hacking due to the Exynos lack of source code materials. Ideally the Korean variant is ideal with a quad-core and two gigs of RAM however its limited availability and has significantly less development because of it.

Just a couple thoughts...


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