At CES earlier in the year the general consensus was that “thin is in.” This applied to everything from new Smart TVs to smartphones. At the same time, Huawei announced the thinnest smartphone ever, the Ascend P1 S smartphone which is just 6.7mm thin while still packing hardware roughly equivalent to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
Rumours are now circulating that Samsung will soon launch the second thinnest smartphone to date, a 7mm thin Galaxy S III. It should be noted it will have a camera hump similar to that found on the current Galaxy S II that will protrude from the main body slightly. On the topic of cameras, the Galaxy S III is rumoured to have a 8 or 12 MP rear camera and a 2 MP front facing sensor.
This extra lack of thickness has been possible by Samsung reportedly managing to shrink the PCB board and components which makes it 10-20% thinner than the current Galaxy S III. As a comparison the Galaxy S II is 8.49mm thin while the latest iPhone 4S is a comparatively thick 9.3mm.
Samsung's upcoming flagship looks as if it will have a quad-core chipset, a 4.6 inch Super AMOLED Plus HD display, 2 GB of RAM and of course Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with Samsung's TouchWiz UI laid over the top.
This base Galaxy S III is rumoured to be accompanied by up to seven variants, while some are bound to be for different carriers in the USA , there may be “3D display” and “stylus” versions. These devices will no doubt go head to head with HTC and LG's own 3D smartphones and also prove useful as a smaller version of the 5.3 inch Samsung Galaxy Note.
On a final note, a French Android website has apparently received an invite to a Samsung hosted event on the 22nd of March. This could well be where the Galaxy S III is launched after rumours of a Mobile World Congress launch will debunked recently.
Kitguru says: Thin smartphones just don't appeal to me, I have loved the ergonomics of smartphones twice as thick. I'll happily take a slightly thicker phone with a larger battery any day of the week.