It appears certain the S3 is finally heading to these shores very soon. After their now somewhat infamous “[We are] pleased there is continued interest about our Galaxy range in Australia, but we have no plans to make any announcements at this time" announcement, Samsung Australia has been sending out press invites for an event this Thursday described as an “exclusive launch of Samsung’s latest offering”. We can only take to mean the highly anticipated Galaxy S3 is to be announced this Thursday.
Pre-empting the launch, all the major carriers
Optus,
Telstra,
Virgin Australia and
Vodafone Australia all have generic pages for users to register for the upcoming Samsung release. Meanwhile across the Tasman, Telecom NZ and Vodafone NZ are being much more explicit.
Telecom NZ mentions the S3 will be "coming soon" while the rival carrier
Vodafone NZ has its site showing the count-down timer below and is offering a sub-orbit flight contest to buyers.
Aside from the cache the Galaxy brand now has, the buzz comes from the sheer power of the quad 1.4GHz ARM Cortex A9 and ARM Mali-400/MP4 graphics combo - this makes the Galaxy S3 the fastest smartphone out there. 1GB of RAM, the 4.8” Super-AMOLED 1280x720 screen, voice control, 16-128 GB of internal memory (plus MicroSD cards) and a fantastic camera round out the specs. Add in very positive early reviews and this phone justifiably has a lot of geeks and even the odd average joe excited. Not exactly dampening the flames are rumours Telstra will be offering the 4G LTE verison of the phone...
Atomic will have a thorough assesment of the phone and coverage of any surprises in the Samsung announcement. In the meantime, as the patent war between the Korean maker and its Apple rival heats up dramatically, we have our ears to the ground for solid leaks on what the latter is cooking up in response.
