Word of the Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G first broke around the time Team TechCrunch was roaming the cavernous halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center at CES, but at the time T-Mobile wasn’t feeling very talkative about release dates.
The mangenta-hued carrier seems to have opened up a bit during the intervening months though, as they’ve taken to Twitter earlier today to announce that their latest Samsung handset will hit their sales channels on March 28. If you’re really lucky (or willing to hop in a car and take some chances), you could snag a Blaze 4G even earlier than that, as some stores will be selling the device a week early.
You’d be forgiven for not remembering the Galaxy S Blaze 4G — between all of the nifty new gadgets on display at CES and MWC, a mid-range T-Mobile handset like the Blaze can slip though the cracks pretty easily. Still, while a Galaxy S III this thing ain’t, one could certainly do worse than eye up a device with a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S3 processor, 3.97-inch Super AMOLED display, and support for T-Mobile’s 42Mbps HSPA+ network.
For better or worse you’ll still have to deal with Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread and Samsung’s hallmark TouchWiz UI but hey, it’s not like the market is swimming in Android 4.0 devices yet. At $150 (after a $50 mail-in rebate, ugh) the Blaze 4G runs squarely in the middle of the T-Mobile pack, and while it looks to be a solid choice for anyone sitting on an upgrade, pulling the trigger on a phone like this still takes some consideration.
A few more bucks nets you a proper Galaxy S II (in white even!), while a few dollars less yields up some solid-if-dated hardware like the HTC Sensation. It’s a perpetually tough call for prospective phone shoppers — should they take a plunge on a mid-range handset now, or wait for prices on high-end devices to drop?
