Samsung's elusive Galaxy S III finally announced!

After months of speculation, many blurry pictures and quite a lot of mystery later, Samsung has finally pulled the wraps off their next flagship handset, the Galaxy S III. The successor to the very popular Galaxy S II, the S III ups the ante, not only for Samsung, but Android smartphones in general and is currently the Android handset to get. Most of the rumours we’ve been hearing off late were indeed true while some weren't. The Galaxy S III was inspired by some elements in nature like earth, water and wind. The design is heavily inspired by pebbles which is reflected in the curved design.The phone measures just 8.6mm in thickness and weighs 133g, making it thin and light. The Galaxy S III will be available in 145 countries. The 3G version will be available by the end of May starting with Europe, Asia and  Africa while the 4G version will hit countries like Japan and South Korea later on.  

One of the main features of the S III is the Siri-esque voice recognition system called S Voice. It features Smart Stay, a technique that uses the front facing camera to track your eye movement so it keeps the screen on as long as you're looking at it. Pretty cool. Social Tag uses face recognition that scans the faces in your gallery and maps them to your friends on Facebook or other social media sites. S Beam lets you bond and share data instantly between two S III devices using a combination of NFC and Wi-Fi Direct. AllShare Play uses DLNA to share your photos and videos on compatible TVs. Coming to the camera, it’s an 8MP shooter in the rear with a BSI sensor and a 1.9MP front facing camera. The camera also features new modes like Burst Mode and Best Buddy mode. The S III will have TouchWiz running on top of ICS so extra multimedia features like DivX playback is possible out-of-the-box.

 

The Galaxy S III definitely seems like a worthy successor of the S II and it does not disappoint. We, for one, can't wait to get our grubby hands on this beauty. The S III will go on sale on May 29 in Europe first followed shortly by a global release.

 

Here’s a quick breakdown of the specifications of the Galaxy S3: 

Android 4.0 with TouchWiz 

1.4 GHz quad-core Exynos 4212  processor

4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1280 x 720

8MP camera with AF, LED flash, BSI sensor and 1080p HD video recording

1.9MP front camera with a resolution of 720p for video chat

16/32/64GB Internal memory, expandable upto 64GB

1GB RAM

NFC, Wi-Fi, DLNA, GLONASS, micro-USB 2.0, HDMI, Bluetooth 4.0

2100 mAh battery