The Samsung Galaxy S III
Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 7:02PM Here is a rather long press release. What are your thoughts? I will publish mine tomorrow after I have had time to digest the newest flagship Galaxy.
London, UK—May 4, 2012—Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies, announced today the third generation GALAXY S, the GALAXY S III. Designed for humans and inspired by nature, the GALAXY S III is a smartphone that recognizes your voice, understands your intention, and lets you share a moment instantly and easily.
This sleek and innovative smartphone has the enhanced intelligence to make everyday life easier. With Samsung GALAXY S III, you can view the content like never before on the device’s 4.8 inch HD Super AMOLED display. An 8MP camera and a 1.9MP front camera offer users a variety of intelligent camera features and face recognition related options that ensure all moments are captured easily and instantly. Samsung GALAXY S III is powered by Android™ 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, with greatly enhanced usability and practicality to make life easier. Packed with intuitive technology, the GALAXY S III delivers a uniquely personalized mobile experience that refuses to be compromised.
“With the GALAXY S III, Samsung has maximized the consumer benefits by integrating superior hardware with enhanced smartphone usability,” said JK Shin, President and Head of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung. “Designed to be both effortlessly smart and intuitively simple, the GALAXY S III has been created with our human needs and capabilities in mind. What makes me most proud is that it enables one of the most seamless, natural and human-centric mobile experiences, opening up a new horizon that allows you to live a life extraordinary.”
Introducing Natural Interaction
The GALAXY S III enhances the interaction experience between the device and user. Smart enough to detect your face, voice and motions, the GALAXY S III adapts to the individual user to provide a more convenient and natural experience. With the innovative ‘Smart stay’ feature, the GALAXY S III recognizes how you are using your phone – reading an e-book or browsing the web for instance – by having the front camera identify your eyes; the phone maintains a bright display for continued viewing pleasure.
The GALAXY S III features ‘S Voice,’ the advanced natural language user interface, to listen and respond to your words. In addition to allowing information search and basic device-user communication, S Voice presents powerful functions in regards to device control and commands. When your phone alarm goes off but you need a little extra rest, just tell the GALAXY S III “snooze.” You can also use S Voice to play your favorite songs, turn the volume up or down, send text messages and emails, organize your schedules, or automatically launch the camera and capture a photo.
In addition to recognizing your face and voice, the GALAXY S III understands your motions to offer maximized usability. If you are messaging someone but decide to call them instead, simply lift your phone to your ear and ‘Direct call’ will dial their number. With ‘Smart alert,’ the GALAXY S III will also save you from trouble by catching any missed messages or calls; your phone will vibrate to notify missed statuses when picked up after being idle.
Easy and Instant Sharing
The Samsung GALAXY S III is more than a personal device that can be enjoyed by one user – it wants you to share and experience smartphone benefits with family and friends, regardless of where you are. With the new ‘S Beam,’ the GALAXY S III expands upon Android™ Beam™, allowing a 1GB movie file to be shared within three minutes and a 10MB music file within two seconds by simply touching another GALAXY S III phone, even without a Wi-Fi or cellular signal. The ‘Buddy photo share’ function also allows photos to be easily and simultaneously shared with all your friends pictured in an image directly from the camera or the photo gallery.
With ‘AllShare Cast’, users can wirelessly connect their GALAXY S III to their television to immediately transfer smartphone content onto a larger display. ‘AllShare Play’ can be also used to instantly share any forms of files between GALAXY S III and your tablet, PC, and televisions regardless of the distance between the devices. Under AllShare Play is also the ‘Group Cast’ feature that allows you to share your screen among multiple friends on the same Wi-Fi network; you can make comments and draw changes at the same time with your co-workers, witnessing real-time sharing on your individual device.
Human-centric Design with Uncompromised Performance
The GALAXY S III not only presents features with enhanced usability, but also provides an ergonomic and comfortable experience through its human-centric design. Its comfortable grip, gentle curves, and organic form deliver a rich human-centric feel and design. Inspired by nature, its design concept is the flow and movement of nature. The elements of wind, water and light are all evoked in the physical construct of the GALAXY S III. In its essence, the minimal organic design identity is reflected in the smooth and non-linear lines of the device. Available in Pebble Blue and Marble White at launch, Samsung will introduce a variety of additional color options.
With a 4.8” HD Super AMOLED display, the GALAXY S III offers a large and vivid viewing experience. Samsung Mobile’s heritage Super AMOLED display even enhances to HD and 16:9 wider viewing angles. To ensure faster content sharing and connectivity, the GALAXY S III offers Wi-Fi Channel Bonding which doubles the Wi-Fi bandwidth.
The GALAXY S III also sports a range of additional features that boost performance and the overall user experience in entirely new ways. It introduces ‘Pop up play,’ a feature that allows you to play a video anywhere on your screen while simultaneously running other tasks, eliminating the need to close and restart videos when checking new emails or surfing the Web. Its 8MP camera features a zero-lag shutter speed that lets you capture moving objects easily without delay – the image you see is the picture you take. With the ‘Burst shot’ function that instantly captures twenty continuous shots, and the ‘Best photo’ feature that selects the best of eight photographs for you, the GALAXY S III ensures users a more enhanced and memorable camera experience. HD video can be recorded even with the 1.9MP front-facing camera, which you can use to capture a video of yourself. Improved backside illumination further helps to eliminate blur in photos that result from shaking, even under low lights.
Mobile payment is also accessible with the device through advanced Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. The gaming experience is enhanced through ‘Game Hub,’ providing access to numerous social games, while Video Hub brings users high quality TV and movies. Furthermore, Samsung Music Hub will offer a personal music streaming service. Game Hub, Video Hub and Music Hub will be introduced in select countries initially and soon rolled out to global markets.
The Samsung GALAXY S III will be available from the end of May in Europe before rolling out to other markets globally.
Reader Comments (12)
Kind of an iPhone 4 -> 4S move. This is the Samsung S2, just better in many ways. I like what i've seen and heard.
Classic move for a south east asian company. Basically copy everything your compettition does but make everything just a little bigger. S-voice = siri. Bigger screen. "scan and match" = itunes match Dropbox = iCloud (at least an attempt at it)
There is no innovation here but still probably the closest thing to compettition for apple. Screams "wannabe" to me but that won't stop it from selling well, especially in Asia and those phobic to Apple.
It has a microSD slot, which is the big win for me.
However the screen isn't as good as the HTC One X; it's pentile, AMOLED (over-saturated) and as far as I know doesn't have the ultra-thin top layer of the One X.
Also the One X has Bluetooth Apt-X; we don't know if the S3 has it. Also wondering about Wifi Direct; my Prime has it so it could be handy.
The US version of the One X has the Qualcomm S4 chip which means it's generally faster than the Tegra 3 (except in Tegra-optimised games) and has amazing battery life. The Exynos is built on a 32nm process and so should give decent battery life. The Tegra 3 is 45nm but has the ultra-low-power companion core. The S4 is 28nm which is a large part of why it's so efficient (it's also a more modern architecture than Tegra 3).
We already know the S4 whups Tegra 3 in all except heavily threaded games (see Anandtech for extreme detail). I'll be very interested to see how the Exynos 4 compares.
I'm still torn though. Part of me wants the biggest, meanest, manliest phone money can buy and part of me says I've already got a powerful tablet and all I need the phone for is to provide internet to the tablet and, perhaps, make the odd phone call.
I suspect want will beat need ;o)
That's a press release? More like war & peace
At first look I was... well... but reading further I'm very surprised to see that Samsung has not only built a smartphone, but has also put attention to the "surroundings". I mean it has a lot of features that can have a great potential both for the phone and for the future to expand. NFC, Voice, the interaction with human face, barometer, REAL multitasking on screen, Samsung services, etc, etc. Apple has to work hard to get on top of this.
Now, S3 will have a huge advantage over iPhone5: it will gain momentum and people holding an iPhone on their hands are going to see more and more of S3 around and suddently the mighty iPhone will look... poor (just look at that HUGE screen).
Samsung is going the right way and personally if at start the "human" motto could sound silly, in fact it can be clever, very clever. People will look at a smartphone, not like a tech device but like a natural useful thing that blends with human behaviour.
For now, I'm impressed.
Now... what about dropping it from 2m? Will it brake? Will it scream "NNooooooooo" while falling? :)) just like us, human.
I should be impressed, but I find that I'm not. Am I losing it? Maybe my days of techno lust are over.
If this had been a couple of months earlier, it'd be much more "WOW".. but as it is, HTC's One X has stolen some of the thunder I think. No doubt this is an awesome phone.. but it's already got competition even before it's launched (and I'm ignoring the gimmicky software "features" like S voice.. purely talking hardware).
However I've not seen any benchmarks for the new Exynos chip so maybe that'll amaze us all with it's speed and power-efficiency.
At first it seemed v good. Today, I realise my Note is miles better.
I'm not saying the S3 isn't a good device, but it's not crazy better than the S2, not as good as the HTC One X in many ways and still doesn't trash the latest iPhone. I don't think apple has much to worry about.
How can I judge this phone. I will wait to see one in the shops and wait for the honest reviews before passing any more judgement. I am curious to know what optics are in the camera.
I didn't get on with the sgs2, but I can't deny it wasn't an excellent phone and (was? still?) the best android android phone.
What it subtly did as well - particularly when compared to the remainder of the market, with average often poor build, and high return rate phones, is to deliver something closest to the iphone "it just works".
Now shoot forward to today - the iphone 4s has clearly had some issues (waiting nearly 4 months for a battery fix just so "5.1" could be trumpeted with the new ipad really annoyed me).
There will be some people who might, having 18 month iphone 4 contracts up, be thinking "why not try the dark side". No noise of an iphone 5 in sight, don't want to wait.
I think the SGS3 will be a success. As successful as the SGS2 I don't know - but I'm sure there's people looking for an upgrade, possibly on an average android, who might pay the extra.
The SGS3 does another clever thing I think - no doubt the iphone 5 will come out, and I think most of us expect a larger screen. But not a 4.8 inch one. So say they come out with a 4.3 inch screen - it'll still look small against what could be the leading android phone.
Time will tell - could be an interesting future. There's no doubt samsung are doing well, it's likely they'll continue to do so. Apple I'm sure will be the same.
What it does leave is the entire remaining smartphone base scrapping for some middle ground...
I think David Choy is really the ghost of Steve Jobs.
As for the SIII, I like it. Looks quite like a G-Nex but with better specs.