Earlier this morning I was contacted by a close friend affiliated with the retail side of T-Mobile USA. He just received word directly from their Samsung account representative that T-Mobile will in fact be getting the Samsung Galaxy S during the first week of July. There has been much speculation and rumor that with the launch of Verizon’s HTC Incredible and Sprint’s EVO 4G that T-Mobile and Samsung were making a push to release this earlier than originally anticipated. Not to mention the hype surrounding Apple’s iPhone 4 which is expected to hit shelves on June 24th.

In the past few months we’ve seen countless articles on the probable provider for Samsung to offer their phone to consumers. There has been no mention of any exclusive contract with T-Mobile and many still believe that Samsung will offer the Galaxy S through all four major US carriers (T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint). An indication of that comes with the renaming of the phone. The Samsung account rep mentioned that the phone will in fact release with T-Mobile as the Samsung Vibrant. Many similar models found in the wild carrying names such as the i9000 or T959 look very similar to the Galaxy S but apparently lack in the hardware department. The rep definitely established that this is in fact the Samsung Galaxy S and all its Super AMOLED, 1ghz Snapdragon, 512 ram, 9.9mm thin, Android 2.1 (upgradeable to 2.2) running goodness dubbed as the Vibrant for sale through T-Mobile at the beginning of July.

While none of this information has been received through a concrete paper trail, there sure is a lot of evidence to back it up. And the fact that Samsung has made no mention of exclusive contracts for this phone doesn’t make it all that far-fetched. Perhaps the representative has an undying pride in his company’s product and felt the urge to let this slip after Steve Jobs’ keynote that sent the twitterverse buzzing yesterday (9 of the top 10 trending topics!). It was also reported from AndroidGuys earlier today that they received email from Samsung to “Save the Date” as they plan to bring to the table the next generation in Android smart phones at the end of this month in New York; without a doubt a coming announcement of the Galaxy S. In addition to this was a hands-on-video with the Galaxy S found on www.howardchui.com that shows T-Mobile friendly icons on its display.

As the summer smartphone battle of 2010 rages on, we’ll just have to eagerly await the arrival of its latest contender. For our NBA fans out there, this is the smartphone equivalent of the 2010 free agent class and holds just the same amount of hype. And with Samsung holding out until the first week of July, the Galaxy S may as well be referred to as the LeBron James of it all! So on that note….GO LAKERS!