When we first heard about the news of manufacturing issues with the Pebble Blue version of Samsung’s Galaxy S III, our thoughts quickly turned to the lengthy delays Apple went through when first getting the white iPhone to market. While the phones now shared the dubious distinction of facing delays related to specific color variants, we still didn’t know the exact nature of whatever problem was causing Samsung to delay the handset, and if the issue was similar to the color-matching problems to which the white iPhone’s delay was attributed. Today, Samsung makes a statement that confirms the delay, while a new rumor attempts to nail-down its precise cause.

Samsung dances around the issue a bit in its official statement, confirming the delay but not getting to the point with a root cause. It says that it wants to have “the highest internal quality standards” when it comes to the “newly invented blue colour and special hyper-glaze material” the GS3 uses.

A rumor hopes to identify the culprit with a little more precision than that, and sure enough, this sounds like the white iPhone all over again. Supposedly, the shade of blue used on the phone’s rear panel didn’t quite match the blue on the front, and rather than have this inconsistency, Samsung is actively recalling shipments in order to replace those back panels with ones that match. Delays may be annoying, but it’s nice to hear that Samsung cares about this phone so much that it’s going to this kind of length to resolve a cosmetic issue.

Source: GSM Arena