Galaxy S Blaze on Sale Exclusively With T-Mobile

T-Mobile USA has started selling the Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G smartphone in select stores today, and will begin nationwide sales March 28, a spokeswoman said.

The Blaze sells for $149.99 after rebate and with a two-year service agreement. T-Mobile, the nation's fourth-largest wireless carrier, is selling the smartphone exclusively, a distinction seen by analysts as another indication that T-Mobile plans to remain aggressive as an independent carrier following the failure of its $39 billon merger with AT&T last year. The carrier in February said it will roll out faster LTE service in 2013, partly by using wireless spectrum it received from AT&T after the merger deal fell through. While T-Mobile calls the Blaze a 4G phone, it won't run over LTE networks and will instead use the carrier's HSPA+42 network technology with theoretical downloads of 42 Mbps, where available. T-Mobile notes that HSPA+42 is faster than the average home Internet connection. Blaze runs Android 2.3 and uses a Snapdragon 1.5 GHz dual-core S3 processor from Qualcomm. The touch screen is 3.97-inches and uses the Super Amoled technology seen in other Samsung smartphones and tablets. The rear-facing camera is 5 megapixels, with a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera for video chat. Video can be recorded in 720p. While some of the newest smartphones are beginning to feature quad-core processors and 8 megapixel cameras, the Blaze fits into T-Mobile's basic strategy of offering lower-priced products to compete with higher-price devices sold by the bigger AT&T and Verizon Wireless. The Blaze price of $149.99 after rebate is half the cost of the most expensive smartphones from those carriers.