Samsung Galaxy S3 unboxed in hands-on snaps

The Samsung Galaxy S3 has arrived at last -- flick through the photos above to see Samsung's newest toy stripped of its packaging ahead of its official launch next Wednesday (or Tuesday evening if you've pre-ordered from Samsung's London shop).

The Galaxy S3 is Samsung's follow-up to last year's obscenely popular Galaxy S2. It ups the stakes significantly with a whopping 4.8-inch Super AMOLED screen, 720p display resolution and a quad-core processor.

The S3's camera doesn't boast any more megapixels than the 8-megapixel snapper on the S2, but as any camera buff will happily inform you, it's not all about the megapixels. The S3 has a host of new software goodies to make your snaps happier, including a 'best shot' selection feature and the ability to take still photos while you're recording video.

A decent camera is paramount to any modern smart phone worth its stuffing, so we'll be putting the S3's snapper through its paces, keeping a close eye on its performance compared with the excellent camera on the iPhone 4S.

Powered by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, blended with Samsung's own TouchWiz interface, the S3 wants to convince gadget fans to steer clear of Apple's next iPhone, which is expected to launch later this year. Can it succeed? Fire your sentiments into the comments, or onto our Facebook wall.

The S3 is currently being run through our gamut of brutal benchmarks and trying tests, at the end of which we'll be awarding it a star rating. Stay tuned, folks.

Are you impressed with Samsung's efforts? Or is there something missing from its latest superphone?