Updated

It's official. Samsung will unveil the long-awaited the follow-up to its popular Galaxy S II smartphone early next month. Today we received an invitation to a Samsung event scheduled for May 3 in London. Although Samsung doesn't specifically mention the Galaxy S III in the invitation, it does ask attendees to "Come and meet the next Galaxy."

And since the company just launched the latest versions of its Galaxy Tab tablets and Galaxy Player media players, there's really nothing other than the Galaxy S III that Samsung could be announcing.

Rumors have been circulating for months about the next flagship Galaxy S phone, and given the astounding popularity of the Galaxy S II, it's no wonder. Display specs for Samsung's next flagship smartphone have been a topic of debate across the web, but most rumors have the phone coming with a 4.7 or 4.8-inch screen with either a 720p or 1080p resolution, respectively.

As for its processor, it's widely believed that the S III will come packing a new, 1.5-GHz quad-core version of Samsung's Exynos processor. Other rumored specs include 1GB of RAM and 4G LTE data connectivity. As for its operating system, its seems to be a foregone conclusion that the S III will come with Google Android Ice Cream Sandwich, especially when you consider the fact that Samsung was Google's launch partner for the OS.

Rumor has it that the S III will also come with a 8 to 12-megapixel rear-facing camera and 1.3 to 2-megapixel front-facing camera. Since the Galaxy S III is a hugely important phone for Samsung, we suspect that the company will stuff the phone with the more powerful 12-megapixel and 2-megapixel cameras to help it compete with the likes of HTC's One X, which packs a 16-megapixel rear-facing cam.

Other rumblings have the Galaxy S III coming with a cool wireless inductive charging setup. Of course, like the rest of the aforementioned specs, the wireless charging is just a rumor.

Check out our rumor roundup for everything we (think) we know about the Galaxy S III, and stay tuned for all of the latest news on the Galaxy S III as it breaks live from Samsung's event next month