As the Galaxy S 3 is approaching its launch, we’re going to hear more and more rumors about it – some crazier than others, while others completely believable and expected. The launches days also seem to have gone from February (MWC) to June, with the latest saying it’s launching in May, which would be exact a year after they launched the Galaxy S 2 globally (it came a few months later in US).
The latest rumors also say that Galaxy S 3 will be extremely thin at only 7mm (Galaxy S 2 was 8.5 mm), it will have a 2100 mAh battery, a quad core Cortex A9 processor (probably clocked at 1.5 Ghz per core), an HD Super AMOLED Plus display, an 8 MP back camera, 2 MP front camera, 2 GB of RAM, 4G LTE connectivity, and it will of course run Android 4.0.
So which of these make sense, and which are a little crazier? For starters, the quad core processor makes perfect sense. Samsung was supposed to ship a quad core Exynos 4412 Exynos chip soon anyway, so releasing the phone in May with it makes sense. I would’ve still preferred it had a Cortex A15 chip in it, but until we know how much of a battery drain that chip is, it’s not entirely fair to ask Samsung for it.
The HD Super AMOLED Plus makes perfect sense, too. After all, we’ve already seen an HD Super AMOLED display in the Samsung Galaxy Nexus last fall, so it makes perfect sense to have improved it to the RGB matrix from the Pentile matrix, so the display in the Galaxy S 3 should be HD Super AMOLED Plus. I hope manufacturers stay here, because I don’t think it’s necessary to have a higher resolution display for a smartphone than this.
I’m a little disappointed with the back camera. In a way I find it hard to believe that they will stay with 8 MP instead of moving to 12 MP like some of their competition will this spring/summer, but on the other hand, it’s probably because the phone will be so thin. They need more space to make it a bigger camera. Hopefully they really made sure that the images are very high quality, and the camera is super fast, just like the one in the Galaxy Nexus.
The 2 GB of RAM is also a very welcome, and somewhat expected addition. Last year pretty much all high-end phones had 2 GB of RAM, so it makes sense that this year at least some of them will have 2 GB of RAM (RAM is pretty expensive component in mobiles). However, I don’t think 2 GB of RAM is completely necessary in a smartphone, but it’s very welcome on a tablet. Even 4 GB of RAM would be welcome on a tablet, especially on a hybrid like the Transformer Prime.
Last but not least, it should have Android 4.0, or perhaps a more recent version like Android 4.1, but it shouldn’t have a lot of new features from Google. I’m sure they are keeping those for JellyBean which will be announced at Google I/O. It will most likely come with TouchWiz 5.0 (although I’m hoping they save that number for the Android 5.0 skin later on, and name this one TouchWiz 4.5).
Samsung might announce the Galaxy S 3 sometime around April to build buzz for it, so start saving your money, because if Galaxy S and Galaxy S 2 showed us something, is that we will be impressed with Galaxy S 3.