Samsung wanted to keep its Galaxy S III secret… so secret, in fact, that the company's engineers had to hide the project from their families and even from most of Samsung. The company kept the engineers in a top secret lab that had its own unique fingerprint readers and security cards, Samsung Tomorrow said, and the device was even hidden from other employees when it was moved from different testing rooms. The comments from the research and development team almost sound like something you'd expect to hear from a an employee in the Pentagon or the CIA.

"My eldest son is in 6th grade," one engineer told Samsung Tomorrow."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. I got so many questions about the GALAXY S III from friends and family… but I'd say 'don't ask me or you'll get me fired.' I told them to check it out after it was officially made public."

Partners and suppliers had to see the device in person and were not shipped prototypes, as usual, the site explained. Worse, pictures of the device weren't permitted, so the engineers had to explain what the device was, verbally. "Because we were only permitted to see the products and others weren't we couldn't send pictures or drawings," Principal Engineer ByungJoon Lee (Mechanical R&D) told Samsung Tomorrow. "We had to explain the GALAXY S III with all sorts of words. The Procurement Department had to set a price for the GALAXY S III and purchase the materials based on our verbal explanations. It was hard for everyone I guess. Hahaha."

Head on over to Samsung Tomorrow for the full interview, it's a compelling look into how Samsung kept the Galaxy S III close to its vest.

[via Samsung Tomorrow]