When the Galaxy S and the Galaxy S II made their respective journeys to the United States, they lost a little something that international customers have enjoyed since the beginning: the physical home button.

According to some new images obtained by The Verge though, that era may be drawing to a close, as T-Mobile’s GSIII variant may sport that home button after all.

It may seem like a minor thing to get worked up over (because it is), but it’s a considerable shift from the four-capacitive-button days of yore. Those design changes were mandated by carriers, and if true, these new images may mean that Samsung is flexing their muscle as the most prolific smartphone manufacturer in the world. That could also mean that the models meant for other carriers will sport a similarly untouched design, and I get the feeling it won’t be long before they start popping up in the wild.

Though the device’s looks may not have changed, you can bet the internals are at least slightly different from the international model. Samsung Mobile chief J.K. Shin noted at the company’s London launch event that the North American variants would be 4G-capable, but that raises another question about T-Mobile’s version — will it have an LTE radio?

T-Mobile’s made it clear recently that they’re working on getting their own LTE network up and running, but it isn’t expected to go live until some time next year. Meanwhile, Verizon, AT&T, and even Sprint have either already lit up their LTE networks or are right on the verge of making it happen. T-Mobile could certainly try and pull a Sprint by releasing LTE-capable hardware ahead of the network actually going live, but I somehow don’t think they’re that bold.

It wouldn’t be the first time a T-Mobile Galaxy device would have its insides changed — when the three domestic GSII flavors were revealed last year, the T-Mobile version remained awfully mum about the device and went as far as locking their demo unit up in an acrylic cage so as not to be manhandled. While the AT&T and Sprint models both sported Samsung’s own Exynos processor, T-Mobile’s was later revealed to be running on a Qualcomm chipset that allowed it to take advantage of the carrier’s HSPA+ 42 coverage.

All that geekery aside, there’s still no official launch date on the books this little looker, but with a Canadian release slated for June 20 we can’t be too far behind. Here’s hoping Samsung has ironed those issues with their hyperglaze finish though, because the last thing they need is to launch some peculiar looking hardware.

As if anyone needed any more proof that the Samsung’s Galaxy S III would sell like (slightly more expensive) hotcakes, a report from the Korea Economic Daily reveals that the long-awaited handset racked up over 9 million pre-orders from mobile carriers across the globe.

To put that number in a bit of perspective, the tremendously popular Galaxy S II was officially unveiled at MWC in February 2011, and managed to rack up 3 million global pre-orders by the end of April. Its successor, on the other hand, managed to garner triple the number of pre-orders in the three weeks since it was revealed in London.

The news comes from (what else) an anonymous Samsung representative, who also pointed out that production was in full swing at the company’s facility in Gumi, Gyeongsangbuk-do Province. At that pace, Korean analysts expect that the consumer electronics giant is capable of churning out nearly 5 million Galaxy S IIIs each month.

Given the months of hype surrounding it and the scores of carriers across the globe that have already committed to carrying it — 296 at last glance — the Galaxy S III seems well-equipped to shatter the records set by its forebears. It wasn’t long ago that Samsung announced that the Galaxy S II had tiptoed over the 20 million sales mark, an accomplishment that came roughly 10 months after the device launched. Nine million units potentially in the bag is a strong start, and it doesn’t even include U.S. customers — our LTE-enabled models are slated to hit our shores well after the first international batches are sent out.

The Galaxy S III is likely the most anticipated Android phone in existence. At least, today it is.

Samsung is the king of Android hardware, the Galaxy S II is its most successful phone to date, and a third iteration is only expected to follow in its predecessor’s footsteps.

Plus, we weren’t even comforted by the usual pre-announcement leakapalooza — Samsung reportedly kept early units locked in test boxes, which only made that glorious moment of unveiling all the more wonderful.

But we’re still waiting and wondering about a potential U.S. release date for what is sure to be Samsung’s most popular phone yet, meaning that getting a peek of the device in the wild is near to impossible until “later this summer”. But as is the case with almost any phone, someone has gotten their hands on a unit of the S III and set up the good ol’ handy cam for our viewing pleasure.

Without further ado, check out this unboxing of the Galaxy S III alongside some of its biggest competitors.

If you can’t tell from all the Italian, a full list of cameos in this video includes the Samsung Galaxy Note, the HTC One X, the HTC One S, and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. You’ll notice that the Galaxy S III is running pre-release software, so things should look a bit more refined come launch day.

Unfortunately, there’s no telling how long we’ll be waiting before the GSIII hits stores shelves. It could be in June, or it could be at the end of August to compete with the next iPhone. Luckily, that soothing soundtrack and Italian stallion narration should soothe your anticipatory twitch until launch day, or at least for the next 7 minutes and 34 seconds.

Samsung has been teasing Galaxy Note users with the promise of Ice Cream Sandwich for months, but now it seems like the consumer electronics giant has finally come through for their phablet fans.

Multiple reports from European Note owners confirm that the long-awaited software update is hitting devices, though how users actually install it seems to depend on their locale.

Dutch Galaxy Note owner Devin Balentina reported that his device received the update over-the-air for instance, while a report from SammyHub points out that German users can nab the update from Samsung’s Kies updater. Not every market has gotten their taste of Ice Cream Sandwich though — I have yet to see any reports from the U.K. for instance, and CNET UK’s Crave blog reports that Samsung is being characteristically quiet on the issue.

Sorry AT&T users, you’ll still have to wait your turn, The new OTA update is only for the international-spec Galaxy Note, and it’ll likely be a while before AT&T finally approves the new software build for mass consumption. But hey, you can always take solace in the fact that your devices have those snappy LTE radios — hopefully you’ve got the coverage to back it up.

Despite a company announcement pointing to a release in during the first quarter of 2012, Samsung pointed out last March that the update would end up going live later than everyone had hoped. To help soften the blow, Samsung also introduced their so-called Premium Suite of Galaxy Note apps like S Note and My Story — rather than spell out what they do I’ll just let you see for yourself:

Well, this morning seems like it’s going to be all about sequels. Not only do we have a shiny new Droid Incredible to wait for, AT&T has just pulled back the curtains on a new device in their Focus series of Windows Phones — the LTE-friendly Focus 2, which will launch on May 20 for a mere $49.99 with a two-year contract.

The Focus 2 may lack the star power and the marketing muscle behind devices like the Lumia 900, but it has managed to turn a few heads in recent weeks back when it was still known as the Samsung Mandel.

Neither AT&T nor Samsung have disclosed some of the juicier technical details, but the Focus 2 sports a 4-inch Super AMOLED display presumably running at the standard 800×480 as well a 5-megapixel rear camera and a VGA front-facer.

Early reports also pointed out that the device only comes with 8GB of internal memory, though whether or not that little detail has carried over into the final build is still frustratingly unclear. All of that fits nicely into a glossy white body (longtime readers may recall how fond I am of those) that comes in at just under 11mm thick.

AT&T aficionados may recall that the Samsung whipped up two Focus Windows Phones last year, the budget-friendly Focus Flash and the slightly-more-robust Focus S. I half-expected AT&T and Samsung to keep that trend going with yet another pair of differently-targeted Windows Phones, but this year AT&T already has those premium bases covered with devices like the Lumia 900 and the HTC Titan II.

Horace Dediu at Asymco has run the numbers and it’s not looking good. Samsung and Apple now control an estimated 99% of vendor profits with HTC scraping in with 1%. BlackBerry and Nokia barely register and, in fact, form a loss.

First, I’d like to note why Dediu believes carriers are willing to cede so much of their profit to Apple and, presumably, Samsung. It’s mostly about lock-in, a sort of bear hug that encourages customers to stay put in the long run. He writes:

With numbers like these, it’s easy to see where things are headed. Although I’ll give Nokia the benefit of the doubt this quarter with the rise of the Lumia line, these numbers don’t look good for runners-up, including LG, Motorola, and RIM.

Arguably, those three manufacturers could pull off a coup – a hot phone like the Droid can push Motorola back into the space and LG is at least popular outside of the U.S. But, like Sony, RIM is an established player with a tendency toward a closed system that serves a dedicated and dwindling audience rather than a general consumer. Buying into RIM at this point, especially with the prevalence of iTunes content and, increasingly, Google’s own marketplace, is akin to a suicide pact.

By this time, there should be few compelling reasons to expect anyone – in the next half-decade say – will be able to unseat Samsung’s dominance. While I’m of the opinion that Apple is in a much more precarious position in the long run, I’d give them the next five years as well. To the rest in the 1% of mobile profits? I’d recommend a realignment and/or moving into something more lucrative.

via TUAW

If we have reached the Death of the Spec, then what Samsung wanted to introduce us to today was nothing short of the birth of the human touch. In the presentation launching the Galaxy S III, the first full half hour was very light on specs, with mention of only one — the size of the screen (4.8″-huge).

Instead, what we got was long on references to intuitive design, with lots of non-tech buzzwords: “nature,” “organic,” and so on. The Galaxy S III is “really designed for humans” the company said today, again and again.

The “simple, organic design” will come in ”pebble blue” and “marble white” and it has worked natural elements into every aspect of the user interface.

Included in that will be new alert sounds that sound like water drops and other sounds from nature.

“The Galaxy S III looks deep into your eyes and only turns off when you do,” noted Jean Daniel Ayme to the audience. That is to say, the screen will note when your eyes are on it and will stay “awake” for as long as you look at it. “It knows precisely what we are doing and our intentions.” It will also recognize your face and that of others — automatically tagging contacts in your pictures and inviting you to share them with them.

And Samsung also talked about its new, improved answer to Siri: the S Voice, “a voice recognition service that does more than just respond to voice commands.”

That will include features like automatically taking users to other services on the phone, like the camera, and understanding different languages. In addition to English, there will be Italian, German, French and “even English spoken in a French accent,” said Ayme.

Samsung has just officially unveiled the long-awaited Galaxy S III at their event in London, and instead of boring you by telling you how momentous a moment this is for the company, I’m just going to jump right into the nitty-gritty.

The Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Galaxy S III features a sizable 4.8-inch 720p HD Super AMOLED display along with a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera mounted right above it. Inside its slim 8.6mm thick frame is the recently-revealed 1.4 GHz Exynos 4 Quad chipset, 1GB of RAM, 16 or 32GB of storage, a 2100 mAh battery, and radios for Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi, and NFC connectivity. Around the back of the device is an 8-megapixel camera pod (sorry, no crazy Nokia-esque hijinks here).

In typical Samsung fashion, the device’s frame is clad entirely in lightweight plastic — available in blue or white — but there seems to have been much more thought put into the GSIII’s design.

That’s not to say that something like the Galaxy S II was bad, but it definitely erred on the more industrial side of the design spectrum. The Galaxy S III takes many of its design cues from nature (Samsung Mobile head J.K. Shin says it was inspired by “pebbles and leaves”), and the smooth lines and curves are certainly a welcome change of pace (at least in my book) from the squared-off angles and textured back seen in its predecessor(s).

As far as its hardware goes, it seems to be the sort of incremental upgrade that people have been foretelling for weeks now, but that’s really only half of the equation here. Samsung TouchWiz interface is back in full force albeit tinged with the same sort of nature-focus that inspired the device’s physical looks, and company representatives have just pulled back the curtains on a handful of nifty new features that make the GSIII a real contender.

Expect a more detailed breakdown in a bit, but the Galaxy S II features an updated camera interface that allows users grab the best possible shots with zero-lag. Also on-board is Samsung’s S Voice, which appears to be one of the best possible Android-based alternatives to Siri out there, and may well beat out Apple’s virtual assistant if it works as well as Samsung claims. Then again, Siri doesn’t exactly set the bar too high despite what Zooey Deschanel or Samuel L. Jackson would have us believe.

Oh, and there’s my personal favorite, a picture-in-picture feature called “Pop Up Play,” which lets users resize videos into its own window, and move it around the display while performing other tasks.

It will launch in 145 countries in partnership with 296 wireless carriers, with the 3G HSPA+ version set to launch in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East in May, while a 4G model will make its debut in the United States, Japan, and Korea later this summer.

Sammy is now the big kahuna of cell phones. Today’s Juniper Research and comScore reports indicated that Samsung kicked Apple from the top spot in regards to smartphones. IDC also released a report today indicating the same thing while noting that Samsung kicked Nokia from the top of total phone shipments. This comes just days after another analyst firm questioned Nokia’s current title as reigning king. Samsung happened to be at the right place at the right time — but only because the company positioned itself properly.

Five years ago, Nokia was the world’s dominant cell phone maker. It held a commanding slice of the pie. Profits were soaring on the wings of cheap devices. RIM was nearly as dominant in its smartphone arena. It was hip to have a crackberry addiction. Then things began to change. Now, five years later, both companies are in nearly equally precarious positions, priming the companies for utter failure or rise-from-the-ashes success.

While Nokia and RIM fell from grace, Samsung and Apple rose to the top. Apple had the benefit of being new to the space. Samsung had the tougher task of retooling its existing line to keep pace with new devices from Apple and HTC. But now, after just a few quarters of neck-to-neck racing, Samsung overtook Apple to become the largest smartphone vendor and overtook Nokia to be the largest vendor overall.

Samsung had a blockbuster first part of the year. It shipped a whopping 42 million smartphones, and per IDC’s research is the only Android vendor on an upswing. The rest of the players are seeing a steady decline in shipments. Samsung’s Galaxy line of smartphones are Android’s only bright spot right now.

RIM is also on the decline. The once-king of smartphones dropped more market share during the first part of 2012 and only accounted for 6.8% of the smartphone shipments in the first quarter of 2012. However, while I still believe RIM can turn things around, the Canadian-based company is in a very tough spot after failing to innovate fast enough to compete with iOS and Android. BlackBerry 10 is a great start.

Nokia and RIM’s decline was caused by sheer arrogance. The two companies rested on their respective successes. Failure to innovate and sell existing supporters on changes is a recipe for disaster. Instead of following the market toward high-end devices, both companies dove headfirst toward the low-end, leading the race downmarket.

Samsung went the other way. The Korean company followed Apple upmarket. In fact, they may have followed a bit too closely. Remember the never-ending patent battle over the striking similarities between Galaxy smartphones and Apple’s iPhone?

The first line of Galaxy S smartphones were haphazard at best, but they set the stage for the fantastic Galaxy S II line. Now, as Samsung is the new king of mobile, the third generation is set to launch within the coming weeks. Samsung is succeeding because it kept moving.

The mobile phone wars are far from over. Apple and Samsung will continue to fight it out. The Samsung Galaxy S III will launch this month but the iPhone 5 (or whatever it’s to be called) is coming soon as well. These reports also indicate that other smartphone vendors, being Android supporters or not, are seeing steady declines in shipments. It might soon be a two dog race.

In mobile world, bigger is not always better. That can be the case for specs, and it can also be the case for market share: and a report out today from Juniper Research highlights a case in point for the latter: Samsung was the biggest smartphone maker in terms of global shipments in Q1 2012, but when it came to making money, Apple was still on top.

In Q1, Samsung is estimated to have shipped 46.9 million smartphones, compared to Apple’s 35.1 million iPhone devices. When considering revenues, however, the tables turn: Apple’s mobile revenues (which include the iPad) were $29.3 billion, while Samsung’s (which include all its mobile products, including feature phones) were just over half of that amount: $17 billion.

And while Apple is beating Samsung in terms of pure revenue, it’s likely also to be beating Samsung in terms of profitability of those devices. When Apple reported another blockbuster quarter when it released its earnings last week, it noted that its gross margin had reached 47.4 percent. Samsung’s margin, on the other hand, was at 12.9 percent.

Juniper, a UK-based research group, notes that although Apple and Samsung have “taken it in turns” to lead the market, it appears that Samsung has now established itself as the bigger player in volumes.

The back-and-forth between the two also is a sign of their collective power at the moment: together, the pair snapped up nearly 60 percent of the whole smartphone market, which totaled 139 million units for the quarter. In Q4, the market share of Apple+Samsung was only 46 percent — which is a measure also of how rapidly others (most notably RIM and Nokia) have declined over that time.

Unless Apple throws us a curve ball and launches another new device before the WWDC in June, it looks like Samsung will continue to remain in the lead for shipments in this quarter. That will be on the strength of its wide portfolio, covering a range of price points, as well as new launches. Case in point: it’s gearing up for the official launch of its newest Android powerhouse, the Galaxy SIII, later this week.

The graphic above, depicting market shares for different mobile brands, tells a pretty stark story about what has happened to competitors as Apple and Samsung have gone up, but the game is far from over for the other players, notes Juniper analyst Daniel Ashdown.

Yes, Nokia only shipped 11.9 million smartphones in the quarter — less than one-third of Apple’s number; the numbers for RIM, which reports on a different schedule, are not likely to be encouraging, either; and HTC has stopped giving out sales volumes altogether. But since Juniper believes the smartphone market will account for 1.1 billion devices shipped by 2017 — up from 600 million in 2012 — these players still have a shot to turn things around.

Samsung has been, for years, slowly approaching Nokia as the world’s biggest handset maker, and today looks like the day the crown has been passed: As of last quarter, Strategy Analytics noted that Samsung shipped the most mobile devices of any single manufacturer world-wide, also taking pole position in smartphones. At the same time, Nokia not only slipped in those rankings but it also got another slap in the face, as Standard & Poor’s, the credit-rating agency, downgraded Nokia to “junk” status.

The news comes on the same day that Samsung presented its Q1 earnings, in which the Korean company reported revenues of 45 trillion won ($40 billion) for the three months that ended March 31 — citing strong results in the division that includes mobile devices, with especially “brisk sales” of its GALAXY S II smartphone and newer Galaxy Note device.

S&P’s downgrade for Nokia is the second credit-ratings blow to Nokia this week: Fitch also downgraded the company’s rating.

S&P says Nokia is now at BB+/B with the outlook at “negative.” It’s basing this not just on the weak results this quarter but also Nokia’s guidance for Q2: “We now expect Nokia to report significantly lower margins and cash flows in 2012 than we had previously expected,” S&P said in a statement.

“We now believe that revenues from the Devices and Services division could decline in 2012 by the same extent as in 2011 (minus 18 percent) after Nokia reported first quarter 2012 revenues below our expectations, particularly for Symbian-based smartphones. We still expect revenue from Lumia smartphones to grow over time but not sufficiently to offset a rapid decline in revenue from Symbian-based smartphones over the next few quarters.”

Nokia, once again, issued a statement reiterating its current net cash position of €4.9 billion ($6.5 billion) and determination to push ahead with its turnaround program.

It’s a big contrast to the story elsewhere: While Samsung does not provide unit sales numbers in its earnings, Strategy Analytics estimates that Samsung sold 93.5 million handsets in the last quarter to Nokia’s 82.7 million, the first time that it has overtaken the Finnish handset maker. Samsung accounted for 25.4 percent of all sales, compared to Nokia at 22.5 percent. Apple, with its smartphone-only line up, rounds out the list at 35.1 million units shipped, or 9.5 percent of the total. All others accounted for 156.7 million devices, giving a total of 368 million mobile shipments in the quarter.

In smartphones, Samsung has been even more impressive, says Strategy Analytics, effectively eating up all the share Nokia had and riding the wave of growth to pick up new users: the analysts estimate that Samsung nearly tripled its marketshare over last year, capturing 30.6 percent of the market compared to 12.2 percent a year ago. The works out to shipments of 44.5 million units, nearly four times as many as last year.

The usual caveats apply: These numbers represent estimated shipments and not actual sales — although some believe these can be interchangeable. Samsung does not provide hard numbers for shipments or sales, so that, too, can be debated. And, other analysts will produce different numbers — in this case, IHS iSuppli, as Barron’s points out, notes that while it too believes that Samsung overtook Nokia in overall mobile shipments, in smartphones, Apple is still selling more. (If only Samsung would just come clean on device numbers.)

In its quarterly earnings today, Samsung noted that its revenues represented growth of 22 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. Margins improved as well: they are now at 12.9 percent, up 1.9 percent on last year. That helped contribute to a 98 percent increase on operating profit, which was 5.85 trillion won ($5.2 billion) for the quarter.

Samsung’s “seasonal” decreases in sales of semiconductor chips and TVs were more than offset by its performance its IT & Mobile Communications division, which includes its mobile phones business. That division made 4.27 trillion won ($3.8 billion) in operating profit. And revenues for that division were 23.33 trillion won, with most of that (18.90 trillion won; $16.7 billion) combing from mobile. Those mobile revenues were by by 86 percent over last year.

Even though I think it’s way too big for the average human, Samsung’s Galaxy Note is doing quite well since its debut in January at CES. In fact, Samsung has sold 5 million units of the Galaxy Note thus far, which comes out to about 1 million Notes sold per month. But could it be selling better?

Possibly.

The phablet is only available at AT&T with a rather steep $299 price tag, but that may be changing soon according to TmoNews.

The site stumbled upon a listing for a Samsung product with the model number SGH-T879. Usually that T and the following 8×9 refer to tablets, but the resolution given alongside the listing is 800×1280. To be clear, the GalNote is the only Samsung device with that resolution, and the fact that 800 comes before 1280 likely suggests that this is a device meant to be held in portrait, not landscape. You know, like a phone.

That speculation on its own is shaky, to be sure, but then TmoNews got a hold of some screenshots that are reportedly taken from a T-Mobile variant of the Galaxy Note. The shots show Android 4.0, the same build number as AT&T’s Galaxy Note, running on the same model number as listed above, SGH-T879.

And to make matters a tad more solid for you, GigaOm noticed that one of the screenshots displays an icon for T-Mobile’s Name ID service. Of course, we don’t know anything for sure until T-Mobile hits us with a press release, but I’m feeling confident that this is for real.

The device will likely employ T-Mobile’s 21Mbps or 42Mbps HSPA+ network, which means it won’t have LTE proper but should still be speedy enough for you big-handed data fiends.

For those of you who love the Olympic Games, the 2012 London Olympics are just under 100 days away. The International Olympic Committee just launched an awesome Olympic Athletes’ Hub which connects Olympic fans to their favorite Olympic athletes. It’s a searchable directory of both past and present Olympians that collects and displays posts from their Facebook and Twitter accounts. It strings in photos, videos, training tips and tons more from verified athletes’ popular social media accounts. Already, over 1,000 Olympians have joined and as you can imagine the number is continuing to grow. As the summer games in London begin, people can also live-chat with athletes directly from the Olympic Village and see real-time results from the competitions.

With special thanks to the International Olympic Committee, we have two Samsung Galaxy Tabs to give away, along with one autographed t-shirt from Michael Phelps, and one from Usian Bolt. We will pick two winners.

If you want to enter, all you have to do is follow the steps below!

1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

- Retweet this post (including the #TechCrunch hashtag)
- Or leave us a comment below telling us what your favorite Olympic sport is

We’ll go through all of the comments and make sure you followed the steps correctly before picking our winner. We’ll choose the two winners at random and contact them once the giveaway is over. This giveaway is a worldwide giveaway where anyone can enter.

Image via.

Update: The giveaway is now over. We will update this post once we have our winners.

Update: Congrats to Keivan Zolfaghari and Clayton Pritchard!

With only a few weeks left to go until Samsung’s big London reveal, the leaks are just flying out of the woodwork now. If that recent Brazilian leak didn’t quite fill you with much confidence, this one just may — the team at Tinhte.vn recently posted an extensive hands-on with what claims to be the Samsung i9300, perhaps better known as the Galaxy S III.

I know, I know, we’ve seen scores of leaks up to this point, but it’s worth pointing out that Tinhte has an impressive track record. They went hands-on with the new iPad before just about anyone else, not to mention scoring early images of the iPhone 4 and Samsung’s 10-inch Galaxy Tab over the years.

Anyway. The i9300 — which BGR claims is the correct model number next big Galaxy phone — features a 4.6-inch 720p AMOLED display on the front, and an 8-megapixel camera pod around back. If the body looks a little strange (not to mention different from that other recent leak), The Verge reports that the device in question is wrapped in a dummy shell so as to keep the device’s true visage from showing through.

Inside that ersatz shell is a 1.4GHz quad-core chipset, and thanks to a quick look at the device’s System Information screen, it indeed appears to one of Samsung’s Exynos 4×12 series systems-on-a-chip. The device also sports 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, support for NFC, and the usual microSD card slot. The specs that Team Tinhte spell out are a bit more realistic rumor mill has circulated recently, and lends a bit of credence to the notion that the GSIII is more of an incremental update than a full-blown revolution.

At this point, there’s no way to be sure that this device is indeed the Galaxy S III (or whatever Samsung ends up calling it), but the fact that Tinhte has since yanked their post entirely fills me with a glimmer of hope. Fortunately, a copy of the video has made its way to YouTube with English subtitles, which I’ve included below.

After months of waiting (not to mention plenty of conflicting reports), Samsung may have finally revealed when they plan to unveil their long-awaited Galaxy S III.

According to a press invitation that has been making the rounds since early this morning, the Korean company will be pulling back the curtains on a new Galaxy handset in London on May 3.

Samsung is as vague as usual here — they make it a point not to name the device specifically, referring to it simply as the “next Galaxy.” That hasn’t stopped we members of the tech press from attempting to dissect the invitation anyway (my goodness, there are three paint slotches on the invitation!).

As such, it’s technically possible that Samsung could unveil some random new addition to the Galaxy line, though I’m pretty sure at least a few mobile geeks would snap after having their chains yanked for so long.

If this does end up being the Galaxy S III — that seems to be what we’re all thinking, anyway — we’ll soon find out what exactly Samsung has deigned to include in it. So far the rumor mill has pointed to ceramic cases, 1080p displays, and quad-core CPUs as likely inclusions, though I’m really looking forward to seeing which of the recently “leaked” images ends up looking most like the real deal.

And hey, if you’re not exactly comfortable planning a last minute trip to London so see the announcement in person, Samsung has you covered — they’ll be livestreaming the event from facebook.com/samsungmobile starting at 2PM Eastern.. In the meantime though, expect a flurry of specious leaks to keep your Galaxy S III appetite whetted over the next 17 days.

In light of the recent layoffs by Sony to the tune of 10,000 employees, I think it’s important to see where Sony currently resides in the tech ecosystem and why the company, once the darling of the CE and PC set, went so far off track.

As background, I recommend you read Joel Johnson’s excellent series on Sony. He wrote it two years ago on Gizmodo and it is one of the most thorough and enjoyable examinations of what was then a sputtering juggernaut. One of the funniest pieces is this man-on-the-street video that asks people what they think of Sony. The kindest praise? One lad called the company “Decent” and another said he owned a Sony TV. The last guy in the video takes a moment to compose his thoughts and says “Sony: fast, cheap, and Japanese.”

Sony rose as a direct reaction to the post-WWII industrialization of Japan. The company, founded by two wartime buddies, Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita, aimed to bring cheap electronics (really electrically powered appliances) to a country that had a surplus of electricity. The founders were geeks of the first order, dedicated to tinkering and experimentation. In an original prospectus, Ibuka wrote:

For a while, Sony was the Apple of the tech crowd. Vaio computers and Sony CE devices graced the homes of everyone from 80s equities traders to dot-commers partying like it was 1999. I remember a time when my co-workers in Europe would hit duty free shops just to pick up one of Sony’s tiny laptop computers, the chiclet keys so small that the fat-fingered had to hunt and peck like beginning typists. People bought a PS2 just to get a DVD player in the home at a time when DVD players were falling from peak prices. Sony brought the cool.

Now Sony is bringing the red in. The company just announced a $6.4 billion loss for FY 2012 and the brand is bleeding cachet. If you asked people what Sony stood for now you’d probably hear something about the PS3 and maybe something about TVs. If we are to use the analogy of the three legged stool – one leg being value, the second being “cool,” and the third being market share – Sony doesn’t have a single leg to stand on.

Vizio took Sony out in terms of value. Vizio makes TVs – cheap TVs – and there’s little value in buying upmarket when the TV-makers themselves are trying to punch out new features as fast as they can think them up. Smart TV? Better upgrade. 3D? Get ye to the Best Buy. New 4K resolution? Where do we line up? TV makers are taking a page out of the cellphone playbook and hoping for an upgrade cycle of 18 months rather than six years. As a result, the need to purchase an expensive new Sony is valueless.

Second, Apple took Sony’s cool. Sony used to be synonymous with content creation. No longer. Even the Sony tools like Vegas are runners up at best and are often still trounced by Final Cut and Premiere. Sony only maintains its cool thanks to excellent gaming hardware like the Vita but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone still insisting on Sony hardware to get any real work done. What, indeed, is the difference between a Dell and a Sony and HP PC anymore?

Finally, Samsung took Sony’s market share. Samsung (and HTC, in the smartphone space) have replaced the ubiquitous Sony logo almost everywhere it matters. Samsung even owns the “white goods” space, selling thousands of air conditioners and washer/dryers alongside its TVs, phones, and media players. All this could change, obviously, but Samsung has thus far bested Apple in phone market share and could do so further in any number of markets.

Sony’s founders named their company Sony because it sounded like “sonus” and “sonny,” the former being related to audio and the latter being what the Japanese thought folks were calling each other over in America – “sonny boy.” They went through a number of branding iterations – “Make.Believe” being the latest – and now they’re attempting the One Sony initiative. They’re beginning the initiative by firing 10,000 people in order to streamline operations and, obviously, create one, unified Sony.

Perhaps instead of streamlining and branching out into medical imaging and emerging markets, One Sony should stand for “everyone should own one Sony item.” Given the past efforts, it wouldn’t hurt.

Another “Galaxy S III leak” hit the blogosphere this morning. A picture. An entirely fake, completely unconfirmed, and obviously tampered with photo.

Just like the rest of them.

Truth of the matter is, we haven’t seen anything legit on the Galaxy S III yet, at least in terms of imagery. I trust that the specs we saw leak out during Mobile World Congress are solid, if not spot on.

The release date rumors, on the other hand, seem to be a tango I’m not capable of. April! No, not April! May! Maybe April!

WTF?!

But far and away, the leaked images are the worst. There’s only one that even comes close to looking legitimate, and even that seems forged. Let’s have a look, yes?

First we saw a render (above) that “leaked” alongside seemingly legit specs. This image actually seems like a great mock-up of what the Galaxy S III will look like. It keeps the same design language that we’ve seen on Galaxy S devices, though I’m nearly positive that it didn’t come out of Samsung.

For one, any one of the people who work at TechCrunch could have mocked up this render. In fact, I look at all renders with a hefty helping of salt granules, since it’s normally very difficult — and sometimes impossible — to confirm that this or that render came straight out of Samsung HQ.

Then we saw the first image that could possibly be real, but there were still plenty of questions. Why is there a giant speaker grill at the bottom? And why is there a home button? The first few leaks, which were definitely renders but leaks all the same, showed no home buttons.

We also have to consider the fact that this image doesn’t match up to the previous render at all, nor does it match up with any of the leaked imagery that has come along after it. That’s not a good sign.

Speaking of the following leaks, a few days after the white “press shot” entered into the public realm, this thing popped up. The aspect ratio looks different, though the speaker grill is still there. However, there are capacitive buttons down below which doesn’t match up with the images we’ve seen displaying a home button and no button at all.

Mysterious.

Oh, and this third image also has a 4×4 grid rather than the 5×5 grid we saw on the preceding image. It’s all a mess, to be sure.

Today, the leak is as bad as it can be.

It looks like someone got all jazzed about the SIII launch, wanted to be a part of the hype, and shopped together a messed up picture of an international Galaxy Note. The Samsung logo is too close to the screen, the display itself isn’t parallel, and once again it matches up with nothing we’ve yet seen.

Now, I hate to be a negative Nancy/bubble buster, but I only think it’s fair to note that we haven’t yet seen the Galaxy S III. Sure, we know it’s supposed to have a 1.5GHz quad-core Exynos processor, a 720p 4.8-inch display (or perhaps 4.7), and that it will surely be a sight to behold.

We just haven’t beheld that sight yet, and I’m kind of sick of all the forgery. In the same vein, this is the same kind of crap that happens with the iPhone year-round, which says something about Samsung.

The company decided to hold off at Mobile World Congress this year, which is where they debuted the Galaxy S II. Instead, Samsung will hold a dedicated event for this phone, as it should. Samsung is Apple’s only real competition in mobile right now. LG and Sony are still figuring out who they want to be, and HTC is already figured out but still recovering. Don’t even get me started on RIM.

So while I’m sorry to have to barge through saloon doors and calm the wild west of rumors, I actually think that it’s awesome that we haven’t seen the Galaxy S III yet. Let Samsung have their moment in the sun*. After two incredibly successful Galaxy S iterations, I think they deserve it.

*If I find an image that I truly believe is the Galaxy S III, you can bet your ass I’ll throw most of what I said out the window and publish it immediately. I’m a fickle lady.

Samsung teased the masses this past February when they revealed that one of their first Ice Cream Sandwich-powered tablets would be the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, a decidedly mid-range device that seemed lacking in the style department. At the time, Samsung made it known that the Tab would arrive in the U.K. Before trickling down to the rest of the world, a plan that didn’t really pan out.

These days, Samsung has been a bit more forthcoming with details for the U.S. market, and the company has just recently given me what I’ve been waiting for: a price and a release date. The Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 will officially launch in the United States on April 22 with a pretty enticing $249 price tag attached to it.

I’ll be posting a more comprehensive review of the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 after I’ve gotten the chance to play with it for more than a day, but here are a few of a my first impressions.

Despite having a slim plastic body, the Galaxy Tab 2 has a surprisingly solid feel to it. That’s not to say it’s particularly heavy — in fact, at 12.2 ounces it’s a shade lighter than Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which makes it very comfortable to hold with one hand. It’s also about as thick as the Kindle Fire, a fact that’s obscured rather well thanks to the device’s nicely-tapered edges. While I appreciate the Galaxy Tab’s build quality, there isn’t much to write home about when it comes to physical aesthetics. There’s no sex appeal to be found here, just lots of gray plastic and a few Samsung logos.

As I noted when Samsung first announced this little guy, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 doesn’t have the most impressive spec sheet you’ve ever seen. Nestled inside the Tab’s slim frame (and behind the 7-inch 1024 x 600 display) is a 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4430 processor, 1GB of RAM, the usual slew of WiFi and Bluetooth radios, an IR blaster, and 8GB of internal storage. If that’s just not enough space for you to work with, there’s also a microSD card slot embedded in the device’s left edge capable of taking up to 32GB of additional storage.

Despite being outflanked by its cousin the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus in terms of hardware, this little guy held up fairly well to my (admittedly unscientific) tests. It handled an extended bout of Minecraft without any major issues, and more graphically intensive games like Shadowgun were completely playable, if a bit jerky at times. Navigating through the device’s menus was generally nice and smooth, even after I loaded up my homescreens with a few of Samsung’s love-them-or-hate-them TouchWiz widgets.

That said, I still ran into a few hiccups during my day of testing — I would occasionally be booted back to the homescreen while scrolling through my list of apps, and the keyboard would mysteriously disappear while I was trying to set up the Peel Smart Remote app for a little veg-out session on the couch.

Tablets don’t always have the best luck when it comes to the cameras they’re graced with, and the 7-inch GalTab 2 doesn’t manage to buck the trend. It sports a 3-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a smaller VGA sensor right above its display, neither of which managed to blow me away. While I was in New York City meeting with Samsung to pick up the demo unit, I snapped this image in the Theatre District — it’s downright lousy, though it probably goes without saying that a tablet shouldn’t be your primary shooter.

It goes without saying that the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is no iPad killer (not that it’s meant to be), but its price tag and performance mean it could definitely give the Kindle Fire some competition for that number 2 spot. Sure, at $249, it isn’t quite as cheap as the Fire, but the difference in performance between the two is definitely noticeable, and barring any weird issues that could pop up over the next few days, I’d much rather own one of these.

Of all the peculiar gimmicks a smartphone manufacturer could lean on to make a device stand out, 3D always seemed like one of the most pointless. Sure, it sounds great in theory — who doesn’t want fully immersive video and apps — but actually using it on-the-go can be a completely different story.

As it turns out, Samsung is right there with me. In an effort to combat some of the more fanciful Galaxy S III rumors floating around, the company told Engadget today that they have no intention to release a 3D smartphone any time soon.

Here’s the full quote, just to make it clear:

Although Samsung Electronics is constantly exploring new technologies for our mobile devices, we have no immediate plan to include displays featuring 3D technology in our upcoming smartphones.

Word of a 3D-capable Galaxy S III first surfaced back in December thanks to a report Korean news outlet ETNews, at which point the claim quickly started making the rounds. Samsung’s denial on this front shouldn’t be a shocker, seeing as rivals HTC and LG both gambled with 3D handsets last year, neither of which managed to gain considerable traction. That of course doesn’t mean that 3D as a trend is going anywhere — Samsung still churns out 3D televisions and YouTube just announced more pronounced support for 3D content — but at least in the mobile space, 3D seems like a technology relegated to the fringe.

Though Samsung seems keen on quashing outlandish rumors as they come, that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from spreading questionable new information. Most recently, a supposed invitation to a Galaxy S III event on May 22 in the UK features what may or may not be half of the forthcoming handset. To absolutely no one’s surprise, it looks absolutely nothing like any of the other leaked images that have surfaced before, which means it’s either a) the real deal or b) absolute crap. I’m leaning towards the latter personally, but I really hope that Samsung starts offering details soon instead of just shooting down peculiar claims.

What happens when you put some of the biggest names in the Japanese wireless industry in the same room to work up a plan to develop some home-grown mobile chipsets? The answer is, apparently, not much.

Just over three months after NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Fujitsu, NEC, and Panasonic Mobile Communications announced the creation of a mobile joint venture to do just that, DoCoMo has recently announced that the deal has unceremoniously fallen apart.

According to a NTT DoCoMo spokesperson, the deal fell through because “the various stakeholders each had their own ideas, and an agreement could not be reached by the March deadline.”

News of the alliance first broke back in September, when it was revealed that NTT DoCoMo would own a majority stake in the venture (thanks to an outlay of ¥450 million/$5.8 million USD), and that the companies would jointly develop those baseband chipsets for use in their own devices. I suspected at the time that those chipsets wouldn’t get much play on the global scale, but DoCoMo proved me wrong with their official announcement — their LTE and LTE-Advanced friendly products were indeed intended for international distribution to boot.

This whole thing strikes me as a shame — as I understood it, the original deal was meant to help these reduce their reliance on components from companies like Qualcomm, who at last glance accounted for something like 80% of the baseband chipset market. Sure, it’s tough to say what kind of impact the joint venture would’ve had on the market, especially considering how entrenched a player Qualcomm is, but there’s no such thing as too much competition. If nothing else, it would help keep the big guys on their toes.