Just how far did Samsung go to keep the Galaxy S III secret? You’d be surprised

An unreleased iPhone walks into a bar and… well, you know how this goes. And so does Samsung.

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In an effort to prevent a similarly catastrophic product leak while developing its long-awaited Galaxy S III, the Korean electronics company went to extreme measures to keep everything under wraps, the company revealed in the Samsung Tomorrow blog this morning.

Samsung had a select team working on the Galaxy S III in a separate lab that required ID cards and security scans to access. The engineers were not allowed to share pictures or drawings with anyone else in the company, so the Galaxy S III team had to describe aspects of the device with words to others in the company — even to the procurement department, which was responsible for setting the price and ordering the bill of materials. And, not surprisingly, Samsung employees put the Galaxy S III prototypes in security boxes whenever they were being moved around — even across the hall.

The company also went as far as developing three separate prototype units, which reduced the overall chance of details about the final Galaxy S III getting out.

And as plenty of spy films have shown us, nothing is truly top secret until you’re forced to lie to your family. Galaxy S III principal engineer Byung-Joon Lee said:  “My eldest son is in 6th grade. He knew that I had worked on the GALAXY S and S II. So I guess he assumed that I’d do S III also. Every time he saw an article on the internet about the GALAXY S III he’d ask ‘Dad! You’re making the S III, right?’ But all I could say was ‘I don’t really know.’ It was really awkward.”

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