Comparison site WhistleOut has done some extensive research into the price of the Samsung Galaxy S III handset around the world and found that surprisingly, Australia is one of the world’s cheapest places to get the Android smartphone on a plan.

The research, which looked at SGSIII pricing in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US, found that both Virgin Mobile and Vodafone are offering plans that are better than many on offer around the world.

“Our Galaxy S3 international pricing analysis reveals that the contracts available to Australian consumers for this handset are amongst the best value in the world. Technology prices are known to be far cheaper in the USA, however the Galaxy S3 shows that to be false for mobile phones on service plans. The UK remains one of the most competitive mobile phone markets in terms of pricing on the leading handsets, but Australia is not far behind,” says Cameron Craig, Director at WhistleOut.

Based on two comparison categories – The cheapest Galaxy S3 plan for a minimum of 400 minutes of calls and 250MB data and the cheapest Galaxy S3 plan including unlimited calls and a minimum 500MB data. In the first case, Virgin Mobile’s Big Plan 29 was a clear winner as the cheapest plan over 24 months, while Vodafone was a competitive second in the latter, as you can see in the tables below.