Samsung Galaxy S3 to be official Olympics phone, report says
Samsung is an Olympics sponsor, and it's launching a phone in London -- the 2012 Olympics city. Start the rumour mill now!
The Samsung Galaxy S3 will be the official Olympics phone, according to a story in the Telegraph.
The paper is light on details as to what this will mean in practice, but we assume being the official Olympics phone doesn't mean it will be a prerequisite for athletes to have an S3 strapped to their forehead during track and field events so they can livestream all the action.
Will the S3 perhaps be branded with a series of five interlocking, coloured rings on its rump? It seems unlikely. Or maybe the Galaxy S3 will be rechristened the Galaxy Olympic? That doesn't seem entirely beyond the bounds of possibility -- but hey, what's in a name? A Samsung Galaxy S3 by any other name will still smell as sweet right?
One of the tidbits dropped by our UK network source earlier today was that the S3 won't be called the S3 at all, along with it having eye-tracking tech and looking much the same as the S2.
The most likely result of the S3 being Olympics-branded is that it will come packing contactless payments technology, NFC, which allows phones to substitute for cash when you swipe them over an NFC reader.
Fast food chains such as Pret-a-Manger have installed NFC readers to accept contactless payments -- although this is mostly limited to chipped bank cards at present, as the UK has a paucity of NFC-enabled phones.
NFC can also be used for info sharing so you could swap contact details by tapping a pair of NFC phones together, or quickly grab some info from an NFC-tagged poster by holding your phone up to it.
The Telegraph story notes that Samsung has previously confirmed it will be making an Olympics-themed phone containing NFC, in partnership with Visa -- the payments company that's been pushing contactless payment on consumers like a crack dealer with its own habit to fund. The two companies are both sponsors of the Olympic Games, as Worldwide Olympic Partners.
Earlier this week, Samsung sent out a press invite, emblazoned with the legend: "Come And Meet The Next Galaxy". This launch event will take place in London on 3 May. The unveiling of the "next Galaxy" device is widely assumed to be the long-awaited sequel to the Galaxy S2 -- and the Telegraph points to the fact it is taking place in London as a sign the S3 will be Samsung's official Olympics phone.
Do you want the Galaxy S3 to include Olympic-sized amounts of NFC technology? Let us know what you want to see inside the S3 by rowing in the comments lake below or pole-vaulting over to our Facebook wall.