It’s curvy, but thin, and has a screen to die for. The S3 is here, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
The actual look of the phone isn’t hugely different, you still know it’s a Samsung Galaxy but it has more elegance to the look than previous models. The corners are more like curves and it’s still a skinny little bugger side on, but the most impressive thing is the screen – 4.8 inches of 1280 x 720 PenTile OLED display. That’s pretty big, but when the rest of the phone hasn’t expanded along with it, it seems like the perfect size. Forget 4.3 inches – bigger’s better.
What next? Ah, yes. ‘S Voice’. Reviews thus far have championed this feature, calling it “responsive” (which is what you want in a smartphone, right?) even in a crowded environment. But Samsung hasn’t said whether it needs an internet connection to work properly – a little suspicious but we can let that lie for now. And then there’s ‘Smart Stay’, which has to be my favourite little touch of them all.
Smart Stay uses eye-detection algorithms to know when you’re looking at the screen, meaning that’s there none of this switching off after 40 seconds because that’s how long the delay is set for. No, it’s Twitter all day if you just keep staring at it.
Another handy feature is ‘Direct Call’, which does what it says but without all the hassle of pressing buttons. When you move the phone to your ear, the number on the screen is the one you call. Cool, huh?
‘Smart Tag’ makes the phone vibrate when you pick it up if you have notifications, and ‘Social Tag’ recognises your contacts faces in pictures and offers to send it to them. Just from this small list of new features that the Galaxy S III offers, it’s clear that Samsung have been doing their social networking homework.
It still runs quickly (and well) with a quad-core 1.4GHz processor, and that’s a relief because slowness can be the death of a smartphone no matter what other amazing things it can do. And to top it all off, the S3 is supposedly going to have wireless charging capabilities.
It’s release date is 30th May so comprehensive and honest testing is yet to come, but the overall verdict from the outside is that the S3 is sleek, clever, and bringing new thing to the smartphone table.
Now I just have to figure out how to get me one of those…
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