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Photo Leaked 12 April
The latest leaked photographs were rather surprising. The most interesting bit was that it seemed to confirm recent rumours suggesting the phone would be equipped with a “Home” button and a five-column User Interface (UI). The image was obtained by a Polish blog called OPDA who claimed certain anonymous individuals, who identified themselves as testers for Samsung, sent the photo to them. OPDA

The rumours, it would seem, are at an end.

Samsung is reportedly all set to reveal its successor to the hugely popular Galaxy S2 smartphone, if invitations sent out to the press are anything to go by. The South Korean electronics giant has invited journalists to "Come and Meet the next Galaxy" on Thursday, 3 May, at 7pm (local time) in London.

A significant portion of the rumours, quite naturally, have been to do with the specifications and the aesthetics.

The phone is expected to have a 4.8in display with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and be powered by a 1.5GHz quad-core Samsung Exynos processor and 2GB of RAM. Furthermore, it should have a primary camera of eight megapixels and a secondary camera with a two megapixel sensor. It will run on Android's newest operating system - Ice Cream Sandwich - and support 4G LTE technology - though only in countries with a working 4G network. The phone should come with internal memory options of 16/32GB and support microSD cards.

Samsung Galaxy S3: Specs

While Apple has yet to go down the quad-core route with the iPhone (or indeed the new iPad) there are already many quad-core phones and tablets on the market, including the LG Optimus 4X HD, ZTE Era, HTC One X, Huawei Ascend D quad, Asus Transformer Prime and Acer A700.

The majority of these powered by Nvidia's Tegra 3 processor - except for the Ascend D quad which is powered by Huawei's own K3V2 quad-core processor. It is almost certain the Samsung Galaxy S3 will be powered by the company's own quad-core Exynos 4412 chip running at 1.5GHz.

Adding fuel to the fire of this rumour is the Chinese manufacturer Meizu which launched the first smartphone featuring this quad-core chip this week, allaying any fears the chip may not be ready for the launch of the Galaxy S3..

As well as being 26 percent faster than current Samsung processors it could also be as much as 50 percent more efficient on battery life too, which is the benefits of multi-core chips which will please smartphone users the most.

The Exynos 4412 System-on-Chip (SoC) is rumoured to feature four Cortex A9 cores and is built on a 32 nanometer (nm) process compared to the 45nm process used on current Exynos chips. Samsung is thought to want to reduce the number of Qualcomm chips it uses in its devices, preferring to use its own SoCs instead.

Samsung Galaxy S3: Screen

One of the main features of the Samsung Galaxy S2 was of course that bright 4.3in AMOLED screen which made for great video playback. The screen used Samsung's Super AMOLED Plus technology which fixed the pentile sub-pixel arrangement problem which led to the screen on the original Samsung Galaxy S to appear grainy.

The Galaxy S3 is set to continue the trend for larger and larger screens with a 4.8in display, making it almost the same size as the company's 5.3in Galaxy Note smartphone/tablet. It is expected to retain the same Super AMOLED Plus technology which gives such vibrant colours, deep blacks and infinite viewing angles.

The main talking point about the screen is the resolution. Various reports suggest that the screen will have a Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 while others suggest it will have a lower (but still impressive) HD resolution of 1196 x 720 - similar to the HTC One X. Either way, the screen should be a stunner and offer the same experience as the S2, though all those extra pixels will require more juice.

Whatever Samsung unveils on 3 May in London, we'll be there to bring you all the details first hand. For now, sit back and enjoy the slideshow of what the galaxy S3 might just look like.

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