Smartphone retailer Carphone Warehouse has accidentally listed the Samsung Galaxy S3 as coming soon on its website, before quickly removing the unconfirmed smartphone.

Galaxy S3
(Source: PC Advisor)

Although we're still waiting for official word from Samsung - which we'll get at the London media event on 3 May - the listing by Carphone Warehouse all but confirms that the Korean manufacturer's next smartphone will be called the Galaxy S3.

Along with the name, a small thumbnail was shown briefly depicting a black smartphone with buttons on either side but other than that there's not much to say about the image which accompanied the listing.

The Galaxy S3 is due to be announced on 3 May and earlier this week Samsung launched a 24-hour countdown timer at the website http://www.tgeltaayehxnx.com/ (which is an anagram of 'The Next Galaxy') and when the clock hit zero at midday on 23 April, we were greated with the trailer, below:

While giving very little away, the trailer speaks about a place where "truly smart technology becomes a natural part of life." The video ends with a crowd of sheep which is a fairly thinly veiled dig at all the iPhone users out there, a common target for recent Samsung adverts.

Over the weekend, a listing on Amazon's German site, spotted by the BestBoyz.de website, and which was quickly pulled from the website, lists the Galaxy S3 as smartphone with a 4.7in Super AMOLED screen, 16GB of storage, a microSD card slot and a 12 megapxiel camera.It is unclear if Amazon has been given some advance notice about the specs of the Asmsung Galaxy S3 or if it is simply speculating.

The phone was priced at €599 (£491) which seems about right for Samsung's flagship smartphone.

Last week Samsung sent out press invitations, asking journalists to "Come and Meet the Next Galaxy." The South Korean manufacturer also made a statement earlier this week to say that all leaked images of the S3 have been "not even close" to the real thing.

However a video leaked online, and subsequently pulled from the web following a legal request from Samsung, showed someone using what was said to be a pre-production model of the S3.

That video claimed the phone would have a 4.6in screen with an HD resolution of 720 x 1,280. It was running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), had a 1.4GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and like the Amazon listing 16GB of internal storage along with a microSD card.

Samsung is likely to maintain its secrecy about the features of the Galaxy S3 until 3 May in London when the IBTimes UK will be on hand to bring you all the details as they are announced.

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