PreCentral: Galaxy S3 gets the cleanest Touchstone mod yet

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Previous efforts to modify Android devices to take advantage of the ever popular Touchstone charger have required at the very least a degree of patience and some non-standard supplies to make wireless charging happen. When Samsung introduced the Galaxy S III back in May, it was supposed to come with wireless charging, though they managed to not show off the wireless charger at the typically odd introduction event. Yet, here we are six months later without the wireless charger publicly available (that's the kind of launch schedule we expect from Palm).

Feeling left out of the three-year-old wireless charging party, Hong Kong-based eBay seller hkrc has taken matters into their own hands, and is now selling modified Galaxy S III back covers with the Touchstone inductive charging coil and appropriate contacts for the Android-based smartphone. The wireless charging backs are going for $28 a pop on eBay, a fair price for something that had to be manually assembled. As of this writing there's just one of the faux-metal dark blue covers available, as well as twenty four-white covers and twenty-six white covers paired with a Palm-brand charger, cable, and Touchstone charging puck for $55.

It's not quite as elegant as the Nexus 4 and its awkwardly-named Wireless Charging Orb, but if you're like us an have Touchstone chargers all over the place and happen to be rocking a Galaxy S III (not so much like us) this could be a useful purchase for you. That said, the Galaxy S III is still largely running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (Sprint was the first US carrier to roll out Android 4.1 Jelly Bean for the S III, and they did that just last week), while the Nexus 4 will launch with Android 4.2 and its Exhibition-like Daydream mode for the charging dock. When Android 4.2 and its Daydream feature might make it to the Galaxy S III is a big unknown. Or you can just be all boss stick with your aging Pre3 like us. At least until the Galaxy Nexus is running Open webOS at full power.

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