From the Editor's Desk: Checking in from a couple days off

Checking in from a couple days of R&R in New York City. It isn't often that I get time to do any tourist-type stuff here, let alone with my lovely bride. But I managed to sneak in a few thoughts on the flight up. Enjoy.

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So what's next? The major U.S. variants of the HTC One line are all on sale in the U.S. That's the HTC One S on T-Mobile, the HTC One X on AT&T, and, finally, the EVO 4G LTE on Sprint, which is a retooled One X. The Samsung Galaxy S III has been released in a couple dozen countries.

So what's next in the smartphone world?

At some point we're going to get some U.S. announcements for the Galaxy S III. And it's worth taking a look back at the past couple of years. In 2010, with the original Galaxy S, Samsung managed to do the unthinkable -- get all four U.S. carriers into the same room and unveil four versions of the Galaxy S. (I was there. It was magical. Or something.) The phones, as you'll recall, were the Verizon Fascinate, T-Mobile Vibrant, AT&T Captivate -- and a wild card, the Sprint Epic 4G Touch, which added a slider keyboard for good measure.

In 2011, Samsung again gathered the major players in New York to show off Galaxy S II. Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T all were represented, with Verizon on the sidelines. (It instead got the Galaxy Nexus later that year.)

So what's going to happen this year? To be completely honest, we don't yet know. Samsung's made no public announcements yet, nor have any of the carriers. You can bet something's coming though. But where things really get interesting are with last week's leak of what The Verge says is the T-Mobile version of the GSIII. And damned if it doesn't look exactly like the European version. Now, Samsung's clout as a manufacturer is unquestioned. (See the above examples of getting competing carriers to take part in a single event.) Will we really see an unchanged version for the U.S.? (And bloat-free is probably too much to ask, right?)

We'll find out when we find out, I suppose.

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