Can We Talk About All These Galaxy S III “Leaks” For A Sec?

Another “Galaxy S III leak” hit the blogosphere this morning. A picture. An entirely fake, completely unconfirmed, and obviously tampered with photo.

Just like the rest of them.

Truth of the matter is, we haven’t seen anything legit on the Galaxy S III yet, at least in terms of imagery. I trust that the specs we saw leak out during Mobile World Congress are solid, if not spot on.

The release date rumors, on the other hand, seem to be a tango I’m not capable of. April! No, not April! May! Maybe April!

WTF?!

But far and away, the leaked images are the worst. There’s only one that even comes close to looking legitimate, and even that seems forged. Let’s have a look, yes?

First we saw a render (above) that “leaked” alongside seemingly legit specs. This image actually seems like a great mock-up of what the Galaxy S III will look like. It keeps the same design language that we’ve seen on Galaxy S devices, though I’m nearly positive that it didn’t come out of Samsung.

For one, any one of the people who work at TechCrunch could have mocked up this render. In fact, I look at all renders with a hefty helping of salt granules, since it’s normally very difficult — and sometimes impossible — to confirm that this or that render came straight out of Samsung HQ.

Then we saw the first image that could possibly be real, but there were still plenty of questions. Why is there a giant speaker grill at the bottom? And why is there a home button? The first few leaks, which were definitely renders but leaks all the same, showed no home buttons.

We also have to consider the fact that this image doesn’t match up to the previous render at all, nor does it match up with any of the leaked imagery that has come along after it. That’s not a good sign.

Speaking of the following leaks, a few days after the white “press shot” entered into the public realm, this thing popped up. The aspect ratio looks different, though the speaker grill is still there. However, there are capacitive buttons down below which doesn’t match up with the images we’ve seen displaying a home button and no button at all.

Mysterious.

Oh, and this third image also has a 4×4 grid rather than the 5×5 grid we saw on the preceding image. It’s all a mess, to be sure.

Today, the leak is as bad as it can be.

It looks like someone got all jazzed about the SIII launch, wanted to be a part of the hype, and shopped together a messed up picture of an international Galaxy Note. The Samsung logo is too close to the screen, the display itself isn’t parallel, and once again it matches up with nothing we’ve yet seen.

Now, I hate to be a negative Nancy/bubble buster, but I only think it’s fair to note that we haven’t yet seen the Galaxy S III. Sure, we know it’s supposed to have a 1.5GHz quad-core Exynos processor, a 720p 4.8-inch display (or perhaps 4.7), and that it will surely be a sight to behold.

We just haven’t beheld that sight yet, and I’m kind of sick of all the forgery. In the same vein, this is the same kind of crap that happens with the iPhone year-round, which says something about Samsung.

The company decided to hold off at Mobile World Congress this year, which is where they debuted the Galaxy S II. Instead, Samsung will hold a dedicated event for this phone, as it should. Samsung is Apple’s only real competition in mobile right now. LG and Sony are still figuring out who they want to be, and HTC is already figured out but still recovering. Don’t even get me started on RIM.

So while I’m sorry to have to barge through saloon doors and calm the wild west of rumors, I actually think that it’s awesome that we haven’t seen the Galaxy S III yet. Let Samsung have their moment in the sun*. After two incredibly successful Galaxy S iterations, I think they deserve it.

*If I find an image that I truly believe is the Galaxy S III, you can bet your ass I’ll throw most of what I said out the window and publish it immediately. I’m a fickle lady.