Samsung Galaxy S3 GT-I9300 international model gets Android KitKat update

A few months ago, Samsung decided not to provide official Android KitKat updates to international users of Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S3 Mini. On the other hand, the South Korean Samsung Galaxy S3 handset received the update to Google's latest mobile OS release. Fortunately, it looks like users of the international Galaxy S3 model can get their hands on an official Android KitKat build after all.

The LTE-capable Galaxy S3 for the South Korean market has 2 GB of memory, while the international version only has 1 GB and Samsung's TouchWiz UI is quite memory-intensive. According to Samsung, this was the main reason for not giving the KitKat update to Galaxy S3 handsets with 1 GB of memory. Earlier this week, members of the XDA Developers community assembled a functional build for them using the official ROM for the South Korean edition.

Unfortunately, this build has a few issues, most notable ones being related to SMS messaging and erroneous display of signal strength. Since this is still ongoing work and the build is quite stable overall, it is probably only a matter of time until Samsung Galaxy S3 GT-I9300 users get their flawless Android KitKat with TouchWiz.