London – Samsung
is positioning its third-generation Galaxy S Android smartphone as a “personal
assistant” that “recognizes your voice and understands your intentions.”
The Galaxy S III,
launched to the accompaniment of the London Metropolitan Orchestra here, will
arrive in the U.S. this summer for activation on “the fastest LTE and HSPA+
networks,” a spokesperson said. It might be displayed at CTIA Wireless 2012 in
New Orleans, and it rolls out in Europe this month.
The phone, with a
large 4.8-inch 16:9 Super AMOLED HD touchscreen, provides “a more convenient
and natural” user experience by detecting a user’s face, voice and motions, the
company said. The Smart Stay feature, for example, maintains screen brightness
when someone is browsing the web or reading an e-book by using the front-facing
camera to track the user’s eyes.
Samsung said the
Direct Call feature lets a person view a text message, then automatically dial
the sender’s phone number when the phone is moved to the user’s ear. The Smart
Alert feature remembers missed messages or calls, then vibrates the phone when
it is picked up to notify the user of the missed communications.
The phone also
boasts what Samsung calls S Voice, or a “natural language user interface,”
enabling the phone to respond to voice commands to initiate such functions as
information search, song playback, volume changes, sending text messages and
emails, organizing schedules and launching the camera to capture a photo. Users
can also say “snooze” to snooze the phone’s alarm when they wake up.
The phone also
improves on Android’s Near Field Communications (NFC)- based Beam function,
which lets users share web pages, apps and YouTube videos by tapping phones
together. To this, the S III adds NFC sharing of movie and music files and
photos.
Another new
user-interface feature is Pop Up Play, which eliminates the need to close and
restart videos when checking emails, surfing the web or launching other
applications. Videos will continue to play in a small window when, for example,
the users reads a message and taps out a reply.
Other features
said to address common frustrations with smartphones include an 8-megapixel
rear camera with zero-lag shutter speed.
Compared to its S II predecessor, the S III
will feature 4G LTE and will launch with Android 4.0, whereas its predecessor
launched with Android 2.3, though a 4.0 upgrade for the S II has been
announced.
Other advances
over the S II include quad-core processor, faster app launching and web
browsing, Wi-Fi Channel Bonding to double Wi-Fi bandwidth, and larger 1,280 by 720
4.8-inch 16:9 screen, compared with the 4.3 and 4.52-inch screens on the U.S.
versions of the S II.
The features of
the device also include WiFi Direct, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n, HD video capture on
the front 1.9-megapixel camera, burst shot function to capture 20 pictures in
rapid succession, and best photo feature to select the best eight of the 20
pictures.
And functions
include the following:
* AllShare Cast, which
lets users wirelessly connect the phone to a TV to display smartphone content;
* AllShare Play,which
lets users instantly share any type of files between GALAXY S III and a tablet,
PC, and TV televisions; and
*AllShare Play
Group Cast, which lets users share content among multiple devices at a time on
the same Wi-Fi network.
