I would really like to know how Apple gets away with releasing software on the iPhone for VZW however they see fit, yet NO OTHER manufacturer can pull this off. I am QUITE certain this aspect is the reason VZW device releases are always so obscure and uncertain. VZW just does not allow anything to ship until they give some blessing on the software and more often than not various bits of info both official and not or in this case actual PREORDERs are possible before that software has got the final blessing for shipment.
At the end of the day I really wouldn't care if they allowed nonVZW sponsored versions of a device to happen however and whenever the OEM decided THEY wanted to sell them and allowed the OEM to push software and such. Seemingly this is VERY frowned upon in order to get VZW sponsorship and contract subsidy offers and such. We as customers need to demand these sorts of things change though. There is NO reason Samsung and ANY other OEM shouldn't be able to easily launch JUST like Apple. Atleast for full price noncarrier sponsored/subsidized sales. It really torques me off that just because a device is built a bit specific for some carrier the carrier gets to control the sales channels of that device so much. It really shouldn't be that way.
Paying full price and not accepting the less for more con would help this sorta thing along. That is a con, because even if you are NOT using the more and can get what you actually use for LESS, that will NOT be true in the future for 99.9% of users, particularly those interested in something like the Note 2. Pay full price, put a middle finger at the subsidy con, and thank yourself in 10 years when you are one of a very small few not constantly monitoring data use.