Samsung Galaxy S3 Jelly Bean Update Release Date: U.S. Has To Wait Thanks To Our Carriers (VIDEO)

The Samsung Galaxy S3 has been recently overshadowed by its bigger cousin, the Galaxy Note 2, and the anticipation surrounding a smaller cousin, the Galaxy S3 Mini, but that doesn't mean it's out of the race. In fact, the Galaxy S3 still remains one of the most popular phones, and it's slowly getting its dose of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

U.S. consumers have no specific release date on when the Jelly Bean update will begin rolling out across carriers. Samsung recently confirmed that Jelly Bean was in fact coming stateside, but the official Samsung update page only lists the timeframe as "Coming Soon!" across all five carriers Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and U.S. Cellular.

There's even more bad news though. Due to the nature of the Android developmental process, U.S. carriers are often some of the slowest to upgrade their devices. First, Google has to develop a new Android, then the company (Samsung in this case) has to tailor it to a specific device (the Galaxy S3 in this case), and then the carriers have to approve thhe upgrade (and fill it with bloatware) before distributing it. This often takes a while, and is a major reason why U.S. Galaxy S3 users will have to wait for a while.

International customers with unlocked Galaxy S3s, however, are much more lucky. The Android 4.1 update began releasing a few weeks ago, although as of now, there are only four countries that have received the update, according to YouMobile, which keeps an updated list of Galaxy S3 Jelly Bean releases.

The four lucky countries happen to be Poland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea. Many more are on the way, and keep in mind that even these international Jelly Bean updates are only applicable to certain variants.

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean offers an smoother, less stuttered interface thanks to Google's Project Butter, and a Siri-like voice assistant dubbed Google Now among other new features.