The Samsung Galaxy S4 will be released in the U.S. on AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint in April. Verizon likes to be fashionably late and has told its customers the Samsung Galaxy S4 will be available on its network sometime in May.

T-Mobile was reportedly going to be the first U.S. carrier to begin offering the Samsung Galaxy S4 on April 24 with pre-orders shipping on that day. Sprint announced pre-orders of the Galaxy S4 would ship to customers on April 27 and AT&T announced pre-orders would ship on April 30.

Engadget is reporting that AT&T has bumped up delivery of the Samsung Galaxy S4 by a week; the smartphone is now expected to ship on April 23. AT&T customers will receive the Galaxy S4 a day early than T-Mobile customers and 4 days before Sprint customers. It's a little strange that AT&T all of a sudden went from being the next to last U.S. carrier to ship the Samsung Galaxy S4 to being the first carrier to ship the highly anticipated smartphone. If this turns out to be true, AT&T customers will have bragging rights for a day, and that will be enough to tick off T-Mobile since it seems to have been either cleverly duped by AT&T or possibly Samsung might have decided at the last minute to give the honor to AT&T.

Do you think AT&T might have known all along and decided to surprise its customers with this news and rain on T-Mobile's parade? Let us know in the comments.