Samsung Galaxy S III rumor roundup: what to expect

It seems like years of waiting, but finally the almost historic (or at least that's what the hype might make you believe) London event is closing in. Just a couple of hours before we finally see what the next Galaxy flagship is all about, we will try to sum up rumors and give a better idea of what to expect.

The event itself is said to bring us the next Galaxy smartphone, which will most probably be called Galaxy S III (or Galaxy S3), a name that has cropped up several times so far, including in Samsung's own Kies software and in an interview with a Samsung's Senior Vice President.

At the event tonight we might see a new tablet and a new cloud storage get announced by Samsung as well.

The new Galaxy smartphone was teased numerous times before. We've seen countdowns, pre-orders, carrier availability confirmation and whatnot. We've even learned that it will be offered in blue or white colors.

Samsung cleverly released a generic design Galaxy S III to carriers and devs, so they can test it without revealing the final design. The prototype body has appeared in various leaks, which suggests that it is the dummy body we've heard about. We've seen a wider variant too. But latest rumors suggest that the device will have a Nexus-like shape, with rounded edges and a 4.8" 720p display. We're yet to learn if it will be a PenTile matrix SuperAMOLED or a conventional RGB matrilx SuperAMOLED Plus.

The CPU powering the Galaxy S III is almost certain to be a quad-core Exynos 4 Quad, which features four Cortex-A9 cores with 32nm architecture and the Mali 400-MP GPU. We've seen early GL 2.1 benchmarks where the Galaxy S III made easy work of its competitors.

The camera is taunted to be either a 12MP or an 8MP unit. The sample pictures we saw supported the 8MP claim. Interestingly, the Galaxy S III EXIF data reported an aperture of F/2.6 (the S II offers a F/2.65) and a focal length of 3.7mm (as opposed to the 3.97mm of the S II), meaning that the new device will have either a wider angle lens or a slightly bigger sensor.

Finally, we expect the Galaxy S III to feature both a hardware home button and a 5-column UI (like the Galaxy Note).

There's not long to go now so stay tuned. We'll be at the London event tonight, covering it live for you as it unfolds.