Following an online countdown and a baffling teaser, Samsung finally reveals the handset sequel to the Galaxy S II-- the Galaxy S III, the next version of the flagship Android handset.
It is also the official smartphone for the 2012 Olympic Games!
At first glance the Galaxy S III looks similar to the Galaxy Nexus-- a slim (8.6mm thick), light (133g) handset with an big 4.8" 1280x720 Super AMOLED display. Construction is in plastic and in a variety of colours, including black, white and a rather attractive "pebble blue."
Powering the device are a 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos processor and an updated GPU Samsung says is 65% faster than the one inside the Galaxy S II. Connection options include Bluetooth, Wifi Direct, DLNA, NFC and a micro-USB port. Internal storage comes in 16, 32 or 64GB sizes, and is expandable via microSD cards.
Cameras are identical to those in the Galaxy S II-- 8MP rear-facing (with LED flash) and 1.9MP front-facing.
However it appears Samsung is focusing less on hardware, and more software. The OS of choice is Ice Cream Sandwich (aka Android 4.0.4) with a TouchWiz overlay and a number of new functions. These include S Voice (Siri-style voice recognition), Smart Stay (using the front-facing camera to detect whether the device is in use or not), Direct Call (automatically makes a phone call if the user lifts the phone to their ear while writing a text message) and S Beam (file sharing between devices using wifi in tandem with NFC).
The 3G version of the Galaxy S III should launch in Europe in May 2012, with the 4G variant to launch later in the Summer.