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Mystery surrounds Samsung's hot upcoming smartphone.  (Source: Samsung (text removed))
Blogs are uncertain what core and screen the phone will end up with when it launches later this week

Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KS:005930)  -- the world's largest or second largest phonemaker depending on which analysts' numbers you trust -- will shake the global smartphone market later this week when it releases its latest and greatest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S3.  Samsung has hinted that the S3 may pack a second-generation Exynos 4 processor -- a 32 nm quad-core.  Most believe the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone will be near the front of the pack in CPU performance.

I. Hardware Rumors Recap

Leaks regarding the processor speed were largely in line with the Exynos 4's (model 4412) announced 1.4 GHz clock speed, though a handful of sites, such as PC Advisor claimed that the phone might launch with a 1.5 GHz clock.

Curiously Phandroid is pointing to early benchmarks posted to AnTuTu as indicating that a dual-core Exynos 4 (model 4212) may also be in the works.  The benchmark showed this dual-core processor trading blows with the hefty quad-core Tegra 3 from NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA), while leaving the rest of the pack behind.

The benchmark also hints at 1 GB of DRAM, a 12 megapixel rear-facing camera, a 2 MP front-facing camera, and a 4.7 inch 720p display.  Other sites have reported that it will sport a 4.6-inch AMOLED display; while yet others have reported that a 4.8-inch AMOLED display will be onboard.

Almost all seem to agree that the new display will be 720p.  Well, everyone except for Boy Genius Report, who claims to have insider info that the screen will actually be a 1920x1080 (1080p) design.

Reports indicate HSPA+ and LTE will be supported, as one might expect.

While it's possibly these blogs are entirely wrong, it's also possible that there may be multiple models, given that this was the approach that Samsung took with the Galaxy S II.  In other words, the May 3 London launch event may bring a smaller 4.7-inch or 4.6-inch 720p, dual-core model, while a later mid-summer refresh could add the quad-core, larger screen (4.8-inch), and higher resolution (1080p).

Rumor has it that the Mali 400 GPU core, while unchanged from a model perspective (versus the Galaxy S II), will receive some modest upclocking into the 450-550 MHz range, to help power that higher resolution display.

II. Software Rumors and "Leaks" Multimedia

Rumor has it that Samsung will be running a new version of its TouchWiz user interface gloss over an Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.3 build.  Like HTC Corp.'s (TPE:2498) Sense UI, TouchWiz offers users extra out-of-the-box visual flair and widgets that can be added to your screens.

Galaxy S3
Supposedly the Galaxy S3 will pack a new version of Samsung's TouchWiz UI gloss
[Image Source: PhoneArena]

The model number of the new phone will reportedly be GT-i9300.

There are plenty of supposed leaked photos.

Samsung Galaxy S3
[Image Source: PhoneArena]

And there's even a supposed leaked video, too.

 

We'll bring you official details later this week, as they become available.

Sources: PhanDroid, TechRadar, The Next Web


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RE: Why 1080p?
By zephyrprime on 4/30/2012 6:39:16 PM , Rating: 2
It would require about half the processing power since it has half the pixels.


RE: Why 1080p?
By B3an on 5/1/2012 1:35:36 AM , Rating: 2
Dont work like that. If only things were that simple.


RE: Why 1080p?
By PrinceGaz on 5/1/2012 11:26:16 AM , Rating: 2
It does work like that generally, as most of the graphics-processing these days tends to be handled by pixel-shaders, the demands of which rise linearily with the number of pixels in the final image.

Whilst vertex- and geometry-shader work is unaffected by the number of pixels, it is the pixel-shaders which are the main workload in most scenes, and a 1080p display has 2.25x the number of pixels than 720p.

Therefore the total workload for 1080p is at most 2.25x that of 720p (assuming no significant delays caused by the larger frame-buffers/cache required), and taking other GPU shader work into account which is unaffected by resolution, probably somewhere around 2x like he said.


RE: Why 1080p?
By NellyFromMA on 5/1/2012 4:32:34 PM , Rating: 2
I'm pretty sure there it isn't as neat as 'about half' even if the GPU is working twice as hard (or half as hard depending on where you are working from).

There is also the power necessary to drive the display internally. How efficient the display is is affected by the pixels it drives as a variable in the overall equation, but it isn't necessarily linear to the point where if Display A drives half as many pixels as Display B it will consume half as much power.


RE: Why 1080p?
By PrinceGaz on 5/1/2012 11:33:54 AM , Rating: 2
(wish I could edit/append my previous post...)

...and don't forget Auntie Aliasing.

With a 1080p display on a screen that size, there's so many pixels being displayed in a small-area that you won't really be able to see the jagged edges to objects even without anti-aliasing, or to look at it another way, you're getting 2.25x super-sampling AA automatically (compared with the same size 720p) simply because the display has a higher-resolution than you are able to see.


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