Samsung seems to be getting ahead of itself in the smartphone race, with talk of the Samsung Galaxy S 3 before the Galaxy S 2 has even been officially released in the US.

A new Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. ad has tipped up on YouTube for the Galaxy S II dual-core smartphone, with the clear message that single core is for loser nerds, while the cool suave kids go for dual core.

A few months ago Microsoft Corp. announced that they were building a version of Windows to run on ARM architecture, the kind found in system-on-a-chip silicon used by smartphones, tablets and other portable devices. Around a month ago Microsoft surprised attendees at their MIX developer conference in Las Vegas by demoing an apparently fully-functional version of Windows on ARM architecture.

Just months after Qualcomm Inc.’s (QCOM) Snapdragon processor began shipping with a clocked speed of 1GHz, the company is making plans to ship a new CPU core running at 1.5GHz in a matter of months. According to ComputerWorld Inc., devices could begin launching with the new chipset by the end of this year. Mark Frankel, VP of product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, said the latest Snapdragon will be targeted at smart phones, tablets and cheap laptops.

In Singapore recently, RCR was privileged to be able to get a glimpse behind the chipmaking curtain at GlobalFoundries’ fab 7, where wafer upon wafer of chips are churned out daily from within the impressive maze of cleanrooms.

Speaking at MobileBeat in San Francisco this week, Samsung’s Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) Omar Khan implied that smartphonese were passé, noting this year was the year of the superphone.

Intel certainly doesn’t want to be left sitting on the bench when it comes to the tablet game, and used the recent Computex expo in Taiwan to show what skills it brought to the table.