Samsung Introduces the GALAXY S III, the Smartphone

Designed for Humans and Inspired by Nature

Effortlessly smart and intuitively simple,

Samsung GALAXY S III reveals a new concept of smartphone

London, UK–May 3, 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.

For multimedia content and more detailed information, please visit www.samsungmobilepress.com.

Well here’s a curious tale for you. Galaxy Nexus owner Sahas Katta from Skatter Tech claims he was ripped of by a Microsoft Store employee, after entering the “Smoked by Windows Phone” competition.

The competition is pretty simple. Microsoft challenges you to perform a basic operation faster on your Android phone than their employee can managed on a Windows Phone. If you win, you get a $1000 laptop. If you lose, you get a chance to swap your phone for the Windows Phone.

But all is not as it seems. Apparently Sahas actually managed to load the weather on his phone faster than the Microsoft employee. His Galaxy Nexus was setup with no lock screen, and two weather widgets on his home screen. Turns out this is exactly what he needed to beat this particular challenge. He thought he’d won, but the Microsoft person had other ideas. Here’s how Sahas explained it:

I excitedly thought I won out of pure luck. However, I was quickly told that I lost. I asked for a reason and was told Windows Phone won because “it displays the weather right there.” That was rather unclear. I showed her my device which also was showing off the same information with two side-by-side weather widgets on the center home screen. After pressing for a better reason, I was told that Windows Phone won “just because.”

After trying to push for a real answer since I clearly won the contest by their rules, another Microsoft Store employee (possibly a manager) came by after noticing me asking more questions. Thinking on his feet, he quickly gave a ridiculous out-of-thin-air reason that I need to display the weather of different cities in different states and that “my phone could not do that”.

Even after speaking with the store manager, Sahas didn’t get an admission of defeat. They just kept inventing vuage excuses for why he couldn’t win the challenge. In the end he left the store, without a prize, more than a little upset with Microsoft.

Today, the whole internet joined the cause, indignant that Microsoft wouldn’t admit defeat. Looks like things turned out ok in the end though. Ben Rudolph just reached out on Twitter, offering Sahas a free laptop, phone & apology. Microsoft screwed up, but at least they apologized and offered to make up for it.

The Sprint Galaxy Nexus closely matches the Verizon model already released. It also sports 850 / 1900 CDMA, Bluetooth and NFC. No surprises here. We’re looking forward to running some speed tests when the device officially goes on sale later this year.

[Via Engadget]

Daily Steals has an awesome deal running at the moment – you can buy a 16GB Unlocked Galaxy Nexus for just $559.99! That’s far below the normal retail price – and this is the best phone on the market today, according to many review websites.

Better be quick if you want to snag the deal though. Only 23 hours left!

Buy the Samsung Galaxy Nexus from Daily Steals

Mobicity have a number of Galaxy Nexus accessories available, including an official battery charger and HDMI dock from Samsung. Note that these are all official products sold by Samsung, so compatibility is guaranteed.

Buy the Samsung Galaxy Nexus from Amazon

Plans range from $59 per month to $129 per month, on a two year contract. Telstra claim if you buy the phone before December 16th, you’ll get guaranteed delivery by Christmas.

Buy the Samsung Galaxy Nexus from Telstra

Unfortunately the product’s currently out of stock. People must have snapped it up at the reduced price. However if you’re looking for a bargain, check out the product page and watch for the Galaxy Nexus to become available again in the near future.

Buy the Samsung Galaxy Nexus from Newegg

Download the Galaxy Nexus User Manual

[Via Droid-Life]

However, if this video is to be believed, there’s nothing to worry about with the Galaxy Nexus. Some crazy guys have actually take a key, and tried their hardest to scratch the screen. But apparently, all such efforts were futile.

This isn’t something that we’d try at home, but it seems like Samsung’s found some other glass that is at least as resilient for real-world usage. Because let’s face it, who’s really going to be pulling a car key across their phone screen, with maximum pressure?

[Via Android Police]