Yesterday, Samsung announced the Galaxy S III Mini, which is apparently the compact or smaller version of the company’s widely popular flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S3. For obvious reasons, the Galaxy S3 Mini shares the same appearance with its big brother but got a smaller 4-inch display (compared to the other’s 4.8-inch screen).
“The GALAXY S III introduced a new concept of smartphone that has proven hugely popular around the world. We’re now delighted to bring its revolutionary design, intuitive usability and intelligence to the GALAXY S III mini in a more compact form.” said JK Shin, President and Head of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics.
The original Galaxy S3 [left] and the Galaxy S3 Mini [right]
Looks aside, the specs of the Galaxy S3 mini are nowhere near the specs of the original Galaxy S3. Honestly speaking, it doesn’t quite live up to its flagship-worthy name. From the original Galaxy S3′s quad-core Exynos processor, the Mini only has a 1GHz dual-core processor.
The Galaxy S3 Mini features a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen of WVGA resolution, 1GB of RAM, 8/16GB of internal storage that is expandable up to 32GB via microSD, and a 5-megapixel camera.
It runs on the latest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI on top. It will also feature most of the software features found on the original Galaxy S3 including the S Voice, Smart Stay and S Beam.
The Samsung Galaxy S III mini is expected to launch in November in the US and probably by December or early next year here in the Philippines. Unfortunately, no word on its pricing has been officially revealed yet.
| Samsung I8190 Galaxy S III mini Specifications | |
| BODY | 121.6 x 63 x 9.9 mm (111.5 g) |
| DISPLAY | 480 x 800 pixels, 4.0 inches (~233 ppi pixel density) Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors Multitouch; TouchWiz UI |
| MEMORY | 8/16GB internal storage microSD slot, up to 32GB 1GB RAM |
| CONNECTIVITY | HSDPA 14.4 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps; GPRS; EDGE Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP, LE, EDR; microUSB; NFC |
| CAMERA | 5 MP, 2592×1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash Geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection 720p@30fps video recording Secondary: VGA |
| FEATURES | Dual-core 1 GHz NovaThor U8420 processor Mali-400MP GPU Android OS, v4.1 (Jelly Bean) |
| BATTERY | Standard battery, Li-Ion 1500 mAh |
| COLORS | White |
| AVAILABILITY | November 2012 |
| PRICE | TBA |
See the Galaxy S3 Mini in action by watching these hands-on videos below:
They really should have spec’ed it to compete with the iphone 5. This one is a non-starter for me.
Wow! Great marketing Samsung! putting the “Galaxy S3″ brand on a Galaxy S1 specs, their family is complete now; small, medium, large and extra large with cheap plastic!
What’s the point to use the “S3″ here? Mini, Micro, Nano….. are ok. S3 users feel cheated.
When was the Samsung galaxy S3 released here anyway in the phils?
What is the current price point of this now?
no single thing is SIII in this ‘mini’ version. just the design, which is btw ugly! LOL. stupid Samsung. even S2 is better. and this is more expensive! ugly screen, no LTE, dual core 1GHz, 5MP cam, 1500mAh battery. everything is cheap!!! inside the ever so cheap build quality! can samsung be cheaper than this? the only great thing is JB! this should be named galaxy s1.1 LOLOLOL! stupid!
This might not be ‘top spec’, but it’s not meant to be. It’s meant to be a cheaper, smaller alternative to those people who don’t want to shell out money for the actual SIII, which I have.
Price in € is 432 so in pesos around 23,000. At that price i can buy the biggre S3