More Galaxy S III rumors – today must end with a “y”, then. In its latest batch of corporate teasing, Samsung has found a surreptitious way to whet our appetites for the new flagship phone long before they even announce when they’re announcing it. The Korea Times quotes an unnamed Samsung executive, who said that the company is looking to lower its dependence on silicon giant Qualcomm and go with an in-house solution. That will come in the the form of a quad-core Exynos system-on-a-chip, though the exact model, speed and capability are all up in the air at the moment. That’s all you get; check back in another week for a tiny nugget of new information.

It’s no secret that Samsung does an outstanding amount of business with US-based chipmaker Qualcomm: the vast majority of their smartphones and a few tablets to boot use varrying tiers of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon architecture. Samsung’s own efforts in that area have been relatively low-scale at this point, but those products that do use the current generation of chips (like the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus) tend to stomp on comparable models. If Samsung can ramp up production to meet the inevitably high demand for the Galaxy S III, they’ll probably have a legitimate competitor to both the Tegra 3 and Snapdragon S4 Krait platforms. The Exynos 4412 chip, with four cores running at a maximim of 1.5Ghz, seems the most likely candidate.

The executive didn’t have any more hardware details on the GSIII to spill, sadly leaving us almost as unenlightened as we were previously. No less than three different “leaks” of the new superphone sprang up last week, and since none of them match any of the others, two or (more likely) all three are more faked versions of the real hardware. Samsung has already stated that they’ll be holding an event just for the Galaxy S II successor sometime before the end of Q2, but other than that and this unconfirmed Exynos report, there’s very little confirmed information oat all.

Over the last few months we’ve seen all manner of rumors and leaks pertaining to the Galaxy S III, Samsung’s next flagship phone that’s becoming infamous out of its sheer elusiveness. But the latest photo to claim legitimacy is the most promising that we’ve sen yet. The image below was spotted by a Reddit user, if it’s a fake, it’s a very impressive one. Two things jump out at us from what looks like a snapshot a of a presentation slide: one, this image isn’t obviously based on a previous Samsung PR shot. And two, it’s sporting the logo of Weber Shandwick, an American PR firm that represents Samsung’s mobile interests.

First, the good news. The mockup’s design and branding seems consistent with Samsung’s current trends, even if the black/grey ring around the front of the phone is a little surprising. The homescreen itself looks like an adapted version of the one found on the Galaxy Note, which is certainly possible if those 4.8-inch screen rumors are true. Take a look at the five shortcuts in the “dock” area – a feature found on both Ice Cream Sandwich and the Galaxy Note.

Some other features raise alarms. One, there appears to be a dedicated camera button on the right side (the profile image has the phone facing to the left). While we’d be thrilled to see a return to this features among mainstream phones, it seems unlikely. Two, the earpiece speaker appears to be on the bottom of the phone, below Samsung’s customary Home button. Barring some very strange ergonomics, this doesn’t seem altogether likely. There’s no mention of hardware specifications in the photo, but it certainly seems to indicate a big, high-res screen and a thickness somewhere in the 7mm range.

The dates on the slide indicate an announcement for May 22nd in London. We haven’t heard any news about such an event (and Samsung has made it clear that the Galaxy S III will get an event all to itself) but this far out that’s not a nail in the coffin for this rumor. For a phone with international aspirations, London would make sense. If the phone were announced in May that would give it a release sometime in June or July, and we’ve got no reason to doubt that.

This is a long way from any sort of confirmation, but it’s the best that we’ve seen thus far.

Source: androidcommunity.com

Another day, another fleeting rumor of the ever-elusive Galaxy S III. After skipping out on Mobile World Congress tro throw its own party Apple-style, Samsung still hasn’t mentioned when it intends to bring the Galaxy S III to market. The CHEIL Worldwide Marketing company thinks they know, according to ZD Net Korea: they say that Samsung is planning a huge promotion for April, when they expect the phone to launch in multiple markets worldwide. The 2012 Summer Olympics will reportedly play a large part in the initial promotion.

The reasoning for the Olympic tie-in is a deal between Samsung, credit card company Visa and the IOC, launching a new NFC-based payment system with the Galaxy S III as the flagship device. NFC certainly makes sense – Samsung has been including it with most of the high-end phones it’s announced in the last few months. The April release seems a little dubious, to be honest: there’s already a Samsung event scheduled for later this month in France, so they’d need to get the product finalized, announced and delivered in a span of just a few weeks.

There’s very little information about the Galaxy S III that can be verified. A large screen, fast processor and Samsung’s TouchWiz version of Ice Cream Sandwich seem like a given, but every analyst and insider between here and South Korea seems intent on getting a word in edgewise. At the moment about the only thing we can say for sure is that a successor to the incredibly popular Galaxy S III is on its way – some time, somewhere.

Samsung is planning an event for March 22nd in France, and the speculation has immediately turned to the potential launch of the Galaxy S III. With the smartphone manufacturer opting to forego the announcement of their new flagship model at MWC and recent rumors pegging the phone with a May release date, the timing leaves the door wide open. Local press were first to receive invites — French site FrAndroid among them — suggesting that whatever is to be unveiled will be in one way or another infused with Google’s mobile OS. While we can make a strong case for a Galaxy S III reveal, we could also be dealing with an event related to Samsung’s Google TV product launch. The company is also making plans to introduce the world to their new selection of internet-connected TVs at a private event. Given a seeming lack of international invitations, we could also be dealing with a regional product launch not on the same scale as the unveiling of the latest and greatest product Samsung has to offer. Throw it in the stew of Galaxy S III rumors that has been simmering since the last iteration hit shelves and flavor it with a pinch of salt for now.

[via UnwiredView]

Do you remember long ago when Apple went ahead and held out from releasing an iPhone 5 – and just went along with the 4S instead? We could see a similar strategy from Samsung concerning the future of their ‘Galaxy’ flagship device. It has recently come to our attention that Samsung won’t be showing off the GSIII at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain – thus makes perfect sense there may be a middle man underway.

A Galaxy S II Plus benchmark has been logged in the An3DBenchXL database, and fits our specifications of what this device could carry. The data shows it running Android 2.3.4 with a 1.5GHz processor, and WVGA display. It could very well be running the same processor as the Note.

To refresh your memory, there was indeed a Samsung Galaxy S Plus, so it makes sense to have a Galaxy S II Plus. The line has been practically flawless, and moved Android’s reputation in a very positive direction – so why change now? Most of our questions will probably be solved at MWC, but until then – we run on leaked data and speculation.

[via SlashGear]