Just when we thought LG is the only handset maker with a smartphone that rocks 2GB of RAM, NTT DoCoMo and Samsung unveiled a version of the Galaxy S III (SC-06D) with the same amount of RAM. Set to hit Japan sometime “this summer,” this particular device will also ship with Qualcomm’s dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, rather than Samsung’s quad-core one. So we’re wondering – is that extra gig of RAM there to make things run smoothly on a dual-core processor? Two cores are not good enough for the proper Galaxy S III experience?

We’re not sure, but as far as we’ve understood the version U.S. carriers will be offering also rocks Snapdragon S4 CPU, while boasting “only” 1GB of RAM. Things are getting pretty confusing here.

I love the idea of getting more of everything under the hood of my smartphone and would like to see Samsung putting 2 gigs of RAM as standard for its flagship device. After all, it is the best phone in their portfolio, right?

(Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co has received some 9 million pre-orders for its third-generation Galaxy S smartphone from more than 100 global carriers, the Korea Economic Daily reported on Friday.

Samsung toppled Apple as the world's biggest smartphone maker in the first quarter, helped by its line-up of Galaxy named devices running on Google's free Android software.

The latest version of its flagship phone, unveiled this month, will first go on sale on May 29 in Germany before being rolled out to other countries.

The newspaper, which cited an unidentified Samsung official, also said the company's smartphone factory in South Korea was running at its full capacity of 5 million units per month.

Samsung declined to comment.

It said late last month that the new Galaxy S smartphone would "substantially contribute" to its second-quarter earnings.

(Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

Instructions

You will find these files useful if you have used the Android Open-Source Project, flashed custom builds on your device, and wish to return that device to its factory state.

In order to use these files, you need to have the fastboot tool in your PATH. That tool is compiled as part of every configuration of the Android Open-Source Project and is the tool used to flash custom builds on your device. On GNU/Linux systems, this also implies that you have configured USB access as mentioned in the machine setup instructions.

Your device needs to be in fastboot mode, with the bootloader unlocked. The relevant key combinations and commands are documented on the page about building for devices.

You need to uncompress each download before use, which creates a new directory for that exact download. That directory contains a ./flash-all.sh script, which handles the various operations, installs the necessary bootloader, baseband firmware(s), and operating system. Note that this operation deletes all user data by default.

After restoring a factory image, it is recommended that you lock the bootloader, for security reasons.

Opinions below are not that of my employer!

I finally got my hands on the "mostly final" version of the Galaxy SIII today and can finally talk about it! I feel compelled to say that this thing is just great. It's sleek and thin, insanely fast, and just sexy to look at (if you find gadgets sexy that is). I'm not going to talk specs, you can look those up if you want. I'll just mention the pluses and minuses.

1. Industrial design. It's smooth and sleek. The screen is huge. It's thinner than anything else you can buy. It does not have the on-screen navigation like the Galaxy Nexus, instead it has a menu, back, and hard home key. I didn't like that at first, but it's great for taking pictures and holding the phone in landscape mode.

2. Smart Stay. Probably my favorite feature. When the phone is about to time out and turn off the display while you are reading, the camera will snap a picture (with zero shutter lag) and do a face-detect. If it finds a face, it stays awake. It works brilliantly.

3. Gyroscope. Samsung did some great stuff that detects certain gestures with the gyro. This has been on other devices but is even better on the GS3. When you are scrolling a list, you can double-tap the top of the phone to jump back to the top.

4. Camera. It's an 8MP (rear, 2MP front), zero-shutter-lag camera. It's what we wanted on the Galaxy Nexus but didn't quite get. The stock camera app is really great and has tons of hipster effects, HDR, touch focus/zoom, burst shot (hold button for consecutive snaps), and panorama.

5. HOLY CRAP, it's fast. Depending on where you get your device the chipset may be different, but the US model is no slouch. There's almost no jank in the display, it's super smooth. For you people who know how long it takes to "adb push" a full CM ROM over to /sdcard/, you'll be happy to know that it just takes a couple of seconds. The I/O bandwidth seems to be far and beyond any other device I've used.

6. Lock screen. The water-trail lockscreen is great, and very functional.

There are things I would do differently if I were in charge of the project of course (ohai CM9) , but I think we did a great job (OK, so maybe I only fixed a couple of bugs, I am just fanboying everyone else who was involved).

The bad- it's still carrier-branded in the US and comes with all the baggage that's involved. I like my technology to have a lot less fine print.

It's a solid piece of engineering and definitely pushes the state-of-the-art forward, considering that this will end up in the hands of a huge amount of people. I hope that the US market will be able to break away from the current subsidy model at some point (ohai Google) but if that's what you are out for, it's a great choice.

Check it out if you have the chance. I'll probably get distracted by some new shiny thing in a week, so take it for what it is