Samsung Exec Says Galaxy S III Could Launch In April After All

This Galaxy S III release date business is getting to be pretty ridiculous — first, all signs pointed to Samsung’s newest flagship launching this April, but then company representatives killed that notion just a few days later. Now, according to a handful of new reports, it looks like an April launch window may actually be in the cards after all.

The news comes courtesy of Samsung Greater China president Kim Young-ha, who explained to a gaggle of reporters at the Samsung Forum event in Beijing that the company is considering pushing up the Galaxy S III’s release date “in order to increase sales.”

Apparently, the device was originally slated to be released in May, though it seems like Samsung is concerned about keeping their momentum up after the release of the Galaxy Note.

Samsung fans will probably be thrilled regardless, but I’ve got to wonder how much this decision hinges on the actions of Samsung’s competitors. HTC, for example, is preparing to release their much-hyped One series smartphones next month, and if their recent partnerships are any indication, they’ll soon be a bigger thorn in Samsung’s side than ever before. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Samsung planned to push up the GSIII release at least partially because they wanted to steal some of HTC’s launch day thunder.

While the device’s launch window is very slowly coming into focus, the actual hardware behind all this buzz is still shrouded in mystery. All of the usual unnamed sources tend to agree on a few things — everyone expects a stunning 1080p screen, a quad-core (possibly Exynos) chipset — but some outlets have claimed that the device will sport a ceramic frame, a 12MP camera, LTE support, inductive charging, and 2GB of RAM. It’s damn near impossible to sift the truth from the chaff at this point, but I guess we can all take solace in the fact that we may not need to wait as long before seeing the real deal.