It is here, and it is official, the newest premium superphone from Samsung, the Galaxy S III, was confirmed in London at the Samsung Mobile Unwrapped event. We have a look at what the Galaxy S III brings to the party in its bid to become the raging success that its predecessor the Galaxy S II was.
The first thing you’ll notice is the massive 4.8-inch 1280 X 720HD Super AMOLED display with a pixel desity of 306ppi which falls short of the 326ppi of the Apple iPhone 4 and 4S. At the topof the display you are greeted by a front-facing 1.9-megapixel camera which is capable of 720p HD video recording and with a physical home button at the bottom flanked by capacitive menu and back keys underneath. On the back is an 8-megapixel 1080p HD video capable camera with autofocus and an LED flash, alongside a speaker.
Inside you’ll get Samsung’s brand spanking new Exynos 4 Quad 1.4GHz quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM with 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of internal storage and a microSD slot that is compatible with up to 64GB cards.
Samsung designed the Galaxy S III to have a removable 2100 mAh battery so that those hard core road warriors who need to change batteries midway through the day.
With all of these numbers flying around, what does this mean for you?
- The screen -Super AMOLED screens have always been some of the best in the industry. The HD Super AMOLED display that is included in the Galaxy S III promises to be one of the best displays ever put into production for the consumer market. Considering that the screen is your primary means of using the phone, this marks the most significant feature of the new phone.
- Quad core processor and 1GB of RAM – One of my biggest complaints about Android is how resource heavy the operating system is, but when you have this much power, who cares. These specs are likely to future proof your phone against many of the most resource intensive applications until you get an upgrade in 2 years time.
- S-Voice – Samsung’s response to Apple’s Siri voice assistant for the iPhone, which allows you to unlock the phone with a customizable verbal commands and then instruct it to load apps, set calendar appointments, search or do other tasks simply by speaking at the phone. Commands like “What’s the weather for today?”, “I want to take a picture” and “Cheese!” are all supported from the outset and you can expect more of them to become available as app developers get their hands on the phone.
- Smart Stay – This feature uses the front-facing camera for face detection and keeps the display backlight on whenever you’re looking at the phone. This eliminates the need to periodically tap it if you’re a slow reader, and the display will automatically turn off to save power when you look away. In addition to those features when you pick up the phone, it gently vibrates if there are missed alerts, showing the new notifications on-screen automatically.
- Best Shot and Best Photo – The Galaxy S III will take up to 20 rapid-fire images at up to 6 frames per second and, optionally, the Galaxy S III will flag which it believes is the best of the end-result based on whether people have their eyes closed or are smiling, what the brightness and blur is like, and more. There’s now a button to take a photo while video is recording, and the Galaxy S III pairs face-detection with a double-tap to automatically zoom in on peoples’ faces in the frame.