More leaked pictures of SGS III show the menu button layout

It’s getting to a point where it’s completely ridiculous now as rumours and leaked photographs of the supposed next Galaxy phone keep pouring in, this time from a Chinese site called mobile01. The link to the forum thread has been taken down now but we still have the image, thanks to The Verge. The photograph was taken of a testing unit, enclosed in a case which looks identical to the ‘chrome finished’ phone we saw a couple of days back. The outer body is clearly a case that’s designed to make it look like the S II. In fact, this could be a prototype chassis created just for testing the call quality and signal related issues, which would explain why we are seeing so many spy shots of the same design. The picture in question appears to be running Twonky Media Server but what’s really interesting is the row of shortcut buttons down below.

Is this the real deal?

Other than the physical home button (which could be just for show), we have an onscreen button for ‘Home’, ‘Back’, ‘Background apps’ and button for ‘Options’. If you look at the lower portion of the phone more closely, you can clearly tell the base is heavily rounded, a lot more than the Galaxy Nexus. There’s no hint about the new TouchWiz UI either but if past leaked pictures of the GT-i9000 are anything to go by then we can expect a very minimal skinning this time around. It seems like Samsung will only be adding custom icons and new options but the main theme appears to be of stock ICS, which is a good thing. However the final product may shape up to be, it’s going to be one slim phone. We just hope for our and Samsung’s sake, that the next Galaxy is indeed something spectacularly good, else they’re going to be the biggest laughing stock in the mobile world.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?