Sprint → iPhone vs Galaxy III

I will be switching to Sprint and I need to buy a new handset. Is there any technical reason I can't use a Galaxy III for international roaming? The Sprint page only lists the iPhone and one Blackberry model as world phones, while I know that Verison is going to push an update to unlock the GSM features on the Galaxy on their network, so the phone must be capable of both CDMA and GSM communictions (and isn't LTE a GSM based technology?).

Is there any particular reason why Sprint has not enabled that (and will they ever)? I would actually prefer a Samsung, but since I do a lot of international travel I would have to go with the iPhone if that feature is locked.

Go to sprints international coverage portion of their website. Look at the countries you frequent. Quite a few developed nations have CDMA roaming so you would be fine roaming with the SIII.

If you can hold out a bit longer and want an android world phone, a new high end motorola device is coming out this month, Motorola Photon Q LTE. It is geared towards business travellers. The SIM slots will be locked so you can not buy local SIMs overseas, but you will have GSM roaming internationally through sprint using the embedded SIM card. The phone does have a hardware keyboard if that interests you.

I'm not so sure about this, but the sprint and verizon versions of the SGS3 do not have identical hardware.

Thanks for the answers. I travel darn near everywhere (some not so developed) at various times so most of my usage is going to be places that don't have CDMA technology.

And I will not knowingly buy a phone from any manufacturer that does not allow local SIM switching. While I am no Apple fan boy the iPhone 5 is looking better every day (not that I have actually seen one ).

you assume the iPhone 5 will be unlocked.