Much like people interested in iOS keep looking forward to the next iteration of the Apple iPhone, those interested in Android now await the next version of Samsung’s flagship handset. The Samsung Galaxy S and the Samsung Galaxy S II were resounding hits, so it’s only natural that the Samsung Galaxy S III draws a lot of interest – much more so than the Samsung-Google Galaxy Nexus.
Rumours have been flying thick and fast about what the new smartphone will feature and when it will release, so we decided to round up the likeliest of them into one single page that you can check out easily. Here’s a snapshot of what we expect (including a leaked image purported to be the Samsung Galaxy S III), and scroll down for details about each aspect.
Screen & Design
Samsung is unlikely to stray too much from the design that made people fall in love with the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II (S2). Expect the Samsung Galaxy S III to be slimmer, though, and perhaps even feature a larger screen.
Some sources have claimed that the screen might measure 4.7 inches and be a new class altogether: HD Super AMOLED Plus, bringing a high-def (1280×720 pixels) resolution to the rich colours of the same screen technology powering the S2.
Processor & Memory
This is the one aspect of the phone which has drawn the most amount of speculation. But we are almost certain that the Samsung Galaxy S III will feature a quad-core processor with 1.5-1.6GHz clock speed, making it the fastest phone on the planet. And expect 1GB of RAM to back this up.
Like with its predecessor, the Galaxy S III is rumoured to come in 16GB and 32GB variants, and perhaps even a 64GB one. Still, that hardly matters with an Android since it will feature a microSD card slot.
Camera
This one is a bit tricky. Russian blogger Eldar Murtazin has gone on record as saying that he has seen the device touting a 12-megapixel camera, and that seems likely, despite it not getting a lot of belief from several other people.
The point of contention always seems to be that with the iPhone 4S, Apple tried very hard to educate people that megapixels don’t alone make for good photographs. However, from our conversations with the people around us, that point doesn’t seem to have registered, so we fully expect Samsung to get into the megapixel war.
And of course, it will definitely feature FullHD video recording, probably with a video light function for night shooting.
Interface
Take this as written in stone. The Samsung Galaxy S III will run on Google Android v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) and come with a new version of the proprietary TouchWiz interface.
In fact, we are a little excited about this. Google has borrowed heavily from TouchWiz while designing ICS, so it will be interested to see how Samsung improves on it to set themselves apart from competitors.
Launch, Price and Availability
It’s likely that the Samsung Galaxy S III will be shown off at the Mobile World Congress in February, but it’s not yet clear. In fact, Samsung SVP of Marketing, Younghee Lee, went on record to say that they were still considering when to unveil the handset.
Our friends at BGR are reporting that the S III will be available in India in May, which fits nicely with the launch schedule of the S2. As for the price, rumours indicate a $700 tag, but even with taxes, we hope it would be around the Rs. 35,000 mark when it comes to India. Any higher and it becomes a really tough sell.
Fan-made Concepts of the Samsung Galaxy S III:
