PreCentral: Samsung introduces the Galaxy S III, with a riverstone shape and wireless charging

[News Reporter]

What do you get when you mix together a 4.8" 720P AMOLED screen, 8 megapixel camera, quad-core processor, a 2100mAh battery, a smooth riverstone-inspired shape, and a wireless charging system? The

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, of course. Yeah, those latter two could have been said about the original Palm Pre as well, and we'll admit we take issue with Samsung's misleading "first wireless resonant charger", which we have no doubt the uniformed will take to mean "first wireless charger", even though Palm crossed that bridge more than three years ago. It's like Christopher Columbus discovering the Americas... centuries after the Vikings.

Disgruntled grousing aside, the Samsung Galaxy S II and Samsung's latest implementation of Android 4.0 and TouchWiz do qualify as impressive. It's a high-powered device that serves as an effective counter to . We're also pleased to see , with the Galaxy S III packing new features like WiFi direct, a camera that can tell if you're looking at the phone (and turns the screen off when you're not), facial recognition for social networks, picture-in-picture for videos while using apps, a Siri competitor dubbed "S Voice" (how original), and much more.

The Samsung Galaxy S III is dues to come out later this month, hitting the US in June, in both HSPA+ and LTE variants. Presumably it'll hit most, if not all, US carriers, hopefully without we've been watching our Android brethren cope with over the past few years.