The wait is finally over and the Samsung Galaxy S3 has finally been announced. This year’s most anticipated device has now been confirmed. We will confirm prices and available memory sizes as soon as possible, in the meantime click the banner below to register your interest for either handset.
Release Date: May 30th 2012
Price:
£429+VAT
Features:
4.8 inch HD Super AMOLED (1280×720) display
Eye recognition
Voice recognition
Quad-band GSM, quad-band 3G
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
WiFi a/b/g/n, WiFi HT40
GPS/GLONASS
NFC
Bluetooth® 4.0(LE)
Memory: 16/ 32GB User memory (64GB available soon)
MicroSD slot (Up to 64GB)
8MP Camera
Accelerometer, RGB light, Digital compass, Proximity, Gyro, Barometer
Understands British, American English , Italian, German, French, Continental and Latin American Spanish and Korean
2100mAh battery
136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm
133g
Official Press Release:
Samsung Introduces the GALAXY S III, the Smartphone
Designed for Humans and Inspired by Nature
May 4, 2012
Effortlessly smart and intuitively simple,
Samsung GALAXY S III reveals a new concept of smartphone
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.
About Clove
Looks very impressive, using olde style SIM cards and keeping a MicroSD slot are nice touches. I’ll have one! Wireless charging is very welcome, too, though someone should tell them they’re not actually the first to put this in a phone!
Lol yep some nice surprises!
I’m keen to know if it supports Bluetooth Apt-X.
Slightly disapponted with the screen, mostly because it’s pentile. I wanted this to be the best phone in every respect but the HTC One X has a significantly better screen.
Waiting to see with the Exynos CPU; it’s based on a 32nm process so it should be pretty fast and power efficient. Not impressed that the GPU is essentially the same as in the SII, just clocked 50% faster.
Still the fact it has a microSD slot puts it well ahead of the One X for me, so I expect I’ll get one. Also liking the removable battery.
Oh and it has a bunch of very cool-sounding features that I’ll probably never use; although a few might be genuinely useful (mainly Wifi Direct and transmitting the screen to a TV).
Yea the microSD slot and removable battery were nice inclusions, the wireless charging as well.
Yes I haven’t seen much about the wireless charging but it should be handy. I have an old Powermat my mum bought me; never found a use for it but there’s at least a chance it might be compatible.
To answer my own question regarding Apt-X, several websites are saying it’s in there and at least some are fairly reputable.
Ah that’s a good idea, didn’t think of the Powermat – we have a couple here that we can try as well. Thanks for letting us know about the Apt-X inclusion, will try to get it confirmed with Samsung when possible as well.
Thanks Chris; confirmation of Apt-X would be great.
I’ve ordered the only Apt-X compatible battery-powered BT receiver I could find; the Samsung HS3000. I’ve got an old Jabra BT3030 receiver but it’s getting a bit long in the tooth.
Should hopefully go well with the Pasce Minirig I got last week; the plan is to plug the BT receiver into that to make it wireless.
There’s also a lot of talk of there being a very good Wolfson DAC in the S3; apparently the DAC in the S2 was a cheapo Yamaha one and the sound was pretty average.
The S3′s sounding better and better, if you’ll pardon the pun
)
Those Minirigs do look like a nice piece of kit, let us know how the sound rig is once you’ve got it all set up.
Will ask the question about the Wolfson when we get the chance as well, although the more technical details aren’t always the easiest to confirm.
I’ve received the HS3000 and it’s pretty good. I don’t have anything yet that can send Apt-X to it, but even ordinary A2DP sounds pretty good.
The Minirig sounds great; fantastic clarity and it can go VERY loud. The bass doesn’t go all that low; they cannae change the laws ae physics cap’n.
I’ve teamed it up with a Wowee One portable speaker; attached to the right surface that provides amazing bass and luckily at work there’s some hollow wooden panelling next to me. It’s pretty good stuck to a tabletop as well.
Only slight issue is that both speakers lack a volume control, so I can’t change their volumes relative to each other. The overall sound is pretty hi-fi-like though, albeit mono.
Sounds like quite the nice little setup that you’ve got going on there! Now to just complete it with the SGS3…