Galaxy S III Rumour Run-Down

By Alex Angove

Last updated 10 April 2012

There have been a multitude of rumors flying about regarding the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone. Screen size, network support, processing power, casing material and more have all been speculated over excessively in the lead-up to its expected release. So which rumors are true and which are false? Of course it’s really impossible to say for sure, but we’ve collected some of the more popular bits of gossip and paired them with some explanations as to why or why not they’re plausible possibilities.

Display

Opinions have tended to vary on the screen size of the upcoming Galaxy S III. We’ve heard everything from 4.3 to 5 inches. More recently estimations have tended to fall between 4.5 and 4.7 inches and we agree. Going by current market trends we’re expecting to see either a 4.7 inch screen or the same 4.65 inch display style we saw on the Galaxy Nexus. We don’t expect a curved screen, just a 4.65 incher with that 16:9 aspect ratio we loved so much back when we did our Galaxy Nexus review.

We’re also looking for a 720p resolution on a Super AMOLED Plus display. This would be a fantastic screen, if not particularly ground-breaking by this stage. We’ve heard a lot of talk about a 1080p screen as well. This is certainly not far-fetched, as 1080p is the next logical step for Android handsets now that 720p is becoming more common. We’d love to see something like this on the GS3, but for now we’re holding our expectations down at the 720p end of the table.

We’ve been hearing talk of the Galaxy S III’s screen going right up to the edge of the handset, meaning no vertical bezels. While we do believe that Samsung will put effort in to minimizing the bezel, we doubt that it will be removed completely. Bezels are still important for things like structural integrity and keeping a thin profile. We think the idea of a bezel-less smartphone is a cool one, but we don’t think we’ll be seeing anything like that for some time to come.

Form Factor

By far the most common rumor regarding form factor of the Samsung Galaxy S III is that it will be made not of plastic, metal or even polycarbonate. There almost seems to be a unified consensus across the web that it will be instead made from a super-hard ceramic. The only claim to validity this piece of goss has over the rest is its sheer prevalence in the tech world right now. Of course “inside sources” have been quoted confirming this leak, but aren’t they always?

That being said we don’t find the idea too far-fetched. Today’s ceramics can be incredibly durable and could possibly offer a cheap and light-weight solution to a lot of structural damage scenarios. If Samsung does go through with this then only time will tell if it’s a good idea, but it’s at the very least an intriguing concept at the moment.

In regards to buttons we’re completely on the fence. Will the GS3 have 4 buttons or only 3? The keys may be capacitive, hardware, a mixture of the two or the same virtual buttons as on the Galaxy Nexus. Virtual buttons may seem obvious after the G-Nexus, but it’s important to remember that that smartphone was a joint-venture between Google and Samsung. It’s possible that the inclusion of the virtual keys was entirely Google’s idea as a way of pushing their adoption across 3^rd party manufacturers and that Samsung was never on board. As a result we’re holding off making any claims regarding this bit of the GS3’s potential make-up until we see something a little more concrete.

There has also been a bit of talk regarding the profile, specifically that it will be even thinner than the GS2. We don’t doubt this, but we’re not going to hold our breaths either. The marketing focus on thin profiles that we were seeing this time last year seems to have died down a bit in favor of 4G LTE, quad-core CPUs and larger 720p displays. A thin profile is always a plus, as it can noticeably reduce the impact of a phone when kept in the pocket, but it doesn’t seem like manufacturers are placing as much value in it anymore. In short we expect the GS3 to be thin, but perhaps not incredibly so.

Processing and Network Speed

There’s a bit of a pickle that smartphone manufacturers are facing right now. Customers at the higher ends of the market want both 4G LTE wireless broadband and a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 CPU. Unfortunately for both the customers and manufacturers the Tegra 3 quad-core chipset doesn’t currently support 4G LTE internet. Does one then build a 4G handset, or one with a stronger CPU? HTC seemed to find an answer with its HTC One X handset, which was to build a quad-core global version for markets where LTE is less prevalent and a dual-core 4G LTE enabled version for the US.

We’re yet to get our hands on a quad-core device, but we’d have to say that a 4G LTE enabled phone with a really solid dual-core processor definitely sounds preferable to us. Dual-cores are still usually more powerful than one really needs, whereas we’ll always be happy with faster broadband speeds. However, in countries where 4G LTE connectivity is available but not particularly wide-spread the difficulty is again augmented by the market. Should a company offer its 4G phone on one carrier and a 3G variant on the other networks or should it only offer the 3G version and keep things simple? It’s a difficult choice and as such almost impossible to predict which option Samsung will go for.

As such here are our 2 predictions for the Samsung Galaxy S III when it comes to processor and network speeds:

Dual-core 2GHz Exynos processor (or something of similar power) with 4G LTE support
Quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor with 850MHz 3G support

The make and brand of the CPUs may change, but our general predictions stay the same: either a dual-core with 4G LTE or a quad-core with premium 3G.

Summing Up

To recap here’s what we think we’re most likely to see based on comparing the rumors floating around right now to current market trends: a roughly 4.7 inch 720 inch Super AMOLED Plus display, ceramic casing, any kind of button setup and either one of or both CPU and network pairings we mentioned above.

Of course everything is still rumor right now, but no matter what the Samsung Galaxy S III ends up looking like we’re sure it’s going to be a very impressive device. It’ll certainly have to be if it’s going to contend with smartphones like the HTC One X, but then again Samsung hasn’t really had trouble keeping its seat at the top of the Android market for some time now.