Yesterday, the much awaited Samsung Galaxy SIII was finally launched and we couldn’t wait to get our hands on it. Luckily, we were part of the company’s global launch in over 28 countries where the phone is expected to be released this coming June. Now on to the details.
We're part of the global launch of the Samsung Galaxy S III
The Galaxy SIII comes in blue pebble and white colors. It seems that the standard of today’s phones have to come in alternate colors to cater to a wider market. The pebble blue has a brushed metal finish while the marble white has a glossy one. Which one would you go for?
You'll get a big 4.8" Super AMOLED screen on the Samsung Galaxy S III
Expect the phone to have a bigger screen size of 4.8″ which still feels like a phone rather than the Galaxy Note which is a cross between a phone and tablet. Even with the big screen, the Galaxy SIII still manages to maintain a slim fit to the hand (unless you’re a small girl) with ample weight and still feels pretty solid, another true flagship phone from Samsung.
The pebble blue Samsung Galaxy S III has a brushed metal finish
As for the hardware, the Galaxy SIII comes packed with a whopping 1.4GHz quad core processor, 1GB Ram with choices of 16, 32 or 64GB of storage and is also expandable with micro SD slot. Now it may surprise you or if you already knew it, the Galaxy SIII does have a micro SIM slot so you’ll need to think twice if you’re going to have your SIM card trimmed for this. This makes it the first Samsung phone to utilize a micro SIM card from the likes of iPhone and Nokia’s Lumia.
The camera is an 8MP shooter with autofocus and LED flash and can record 1080p videos at 30fps. Like the Galaxy Nexus, it also has the burst shooting feature.
Not the thinnest but still thin nevertheless, only 8.6mm
The Galaxy SIII comes with the latest Android ICS and inherits the features of the Galaxy Nexus like the S-Beam, Face unlock, Smart Voice and the such but more features were added to make this phone step up. It has the Smart Stay in which the phone detects the user’s eyelid movements and the screen will close when you close your eyes and opens when the eyes are exposed. This comes in very handy when reading e-books or long emails especially now that you have a bigger screen in your hands. Also, it has a gesture feature in which you’ll only have to put the phone in your ear in order to answer a call and put the phone downwards to end a call. How nifty is that?
I only had a brief run through with the phone and all seems to be running smoothly. The phone promises a better battery life so we’ll be looking out for that once we get a review unit. It was a fun launch event well-attended by celebrities where 10 lucky people went home with a Samsung Galaxy S III of their own.
This is an exciting time once again for Samsung and even before the Galaxy SIII was released, there are over 9 million pre-orders already so this is a very hot item you don’t want to miss. The Samsung Galaxy S III (16GB) will have a retail price of Php32,990.
