After reports of an insane amount of pre-orders, the Samsung Galaxy S III is now available in Dubai, a full week before its official release in Europe.

According to Reuters, however, the reports of all those pre-orders are mostly from global carriers, meaning individual users aren’t responsible for the jump in the phone’s popularity; carriers are simply planning ahead for the expected onslaught of business. If that’s the case, it will be interesting to see how well the phone does with an early release, and whether hardcore fans will try to get their hands on one by traveling to another country.

While certain devices blowing up in popularity aren’t uncommon, it seems a little odd for this one to be so anticipated in the states, since it won’t work on Verizon or Sprint’s network due to its lack of CDMA capability and will rely on wi-fi for data retrieval when used with T-Mobile. Those three carriers are pretty big names, and considering the phone costs a whopping $800, it seems a little odd.

The phone has been highly touted, however, and fans of the brand don’t seem to care about such details.