Samsung's Galaxy S4 Mini is finally arriving stateside

If you’ve been in the market for Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Mini, your only options to date have been to either locate an importer, or try your luck on eBay. Today, Samsung announced that that would no longer be the case going forward into November.

Starting next month, the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini will be available on four US carriers: AT&T, Sprint, US Cellular and Verizon. The domestic version of the phone will be more or less like the international version we’ve already seen, however Samsung has increased internal storage twofold to 16GB.

"Samsung continues to provide a wide range of products to fit consumers' needs," said Gregory Lee, president of Samsung Mobile in a press statement. "The Galaxy S 4 mini continues that commitment by bringing the paramount features of our flagship Galaxy S 4 smartphone to a smaller, more compact form factor."

The Galaxy S4 Mini is Samsung’s mid-range smartphone and boasts a similar spec sheet to its more powerful counterpart. The main difference is screen size—at 4.3 inches rather than the S4’s near-phablet 5-inch screen. The S4 Mini is built from the same polycarbonate as the Galaxy S4 and runs off a dual-core 1.7 GHz Snapdragon 400 chipset.  The phone’s Super AMOLED screen produces a pixel density of 256 ppi and dual cameras on front and back capture images at 1.9 megapixels and 8 megapixels, respectively.

In addition to the S4 Mini, Samsung in July also released the Galaxy S4 Zoom. As the name implies, this variant is focused around the camera, which boasts 10x optical zoom, image stabilizer and xenon flash. The phone is also capable of shooting video at 1080p, but otherwise, it is nearly identical to the Galaxy S4 Mini.

The trend of creating “miniature” versions of flagship smartphones is not limited to Samsung. While Apple’s iPhone continues to come in a single size variant (4 inches), HTC unveiled a Mini One in July and released it globally the following month. Reviews for both the HTC One Mini and Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini have been largely positive.