Samsung Galaxy S III (CDMA)

It's not that much more complex. It's not something that would affect price more than a dollar or so, which means nothing when phones are priced in $50 increments.

Not only that, but carriers price phones in a way that's only loosely related to what they actually cost to manufacture. Manufacturers strike special deals with volume discounts, future sales commitments, marketing incentives, and all sorts of crazy things that skew the market price wildly. Plus the carrier has their own motivations for promoting certain phones and pricing them differently. It's not at all uncommon for the more expensive phone to actually be priced less for the consumer.

My point was only that these are two different phones, developed for two different carriers, built to two different sets of demands. Samsung has their own reasons for wanting them to look and work as similarly as possible, but Verizon still has their own demands, such as that more of their high-end phones include global roaming. That's long been the case, if you look at Verizon's lineup versus Sprint's. It's because Verizon Wireless is actually a joint venture between Verizon Communications and Vodafone, an overseas carrier. So of course they want more of their phones to be global.

Therefore I expect it's more that Verizon demanded Samsung add global roaming to their version. I don't think Sprint "rejected" that feature, it's just something they don't demand the way Verizon does. Verizon wants it on most of their high-end phones. Sprint just cares that they have a few global options in their lineup.