The Samsung Galaxy S III truly is the next big thing in Android land right now, even though the device has not been officially announced. Many of us expected Samsung to unpack their next flagship phone during Mobile World Congress in late February, but the latest rumors suggest it will not make an appearance at that show.
This week during Samsung’s earnings call, a company executive named Mrs. Younghee Lee actually acknowledged the existence of the Galaxy S III. In response to an analyst question about the Galaxy S III launch date, Mrs. Lee responded, “We are still reviewing several options when to launch. We will let you know when it’s decided.”
Also discovered this morning on a Samsung support site was an upcoming model number GT-I9300. This is one of the highest model numbers we have seen yet (Galaxy Nexus was i9250), which leads some to believe this could be the model number of the Galaxy S III.
While most companies have already announced their MWC press events, Samsung has yet to send out an invitation to theirs. With every passing day, it looks more likely that Samsung will not be announcing their Galaxy S III next month.
Other recent rumors suggest there are multiple versions of the Galaxy S III in testing, so Samsung could still be debating which model to go with. It is widely believed that Samsung will use their own quad-core 1.5 GHz Exynos 4412 processor, but there’s also a small chance they could go with the next-generation dual-core 2.0 GHz Exynos 5250.
We already saw the Exynos 5250 in action at CES and Samsung revealed during their earnings call that mass production would begin in Q2. The chip is likely to appear in a tablet first, but it should also power smartphones later this year.
Personally, I’m rooting for Samsung to push back the release date of the Galaxy S III and go with the Exynos 5250. The chances of this are slim based on the availability of the chip, but Samsung could boast the first smartphone based on ARM’s Cortex-A15 CPU core.
Mobile World Congress is exactly one month away and I’ll be making the long trip to check it out, so hopefully we can uncover the true story soon.
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