Samsung Galaxy S III
The Samsung Galaxy S III is an Android smartphone developed and marketed by Samsung Electronics. Launched in 2012, it had sold more than 80 million units overall, making it the most sold phone in the S series. It is the third smartphone in the Samsung Galaxy S series.
It is distinguished from its predecessor by its larger and higher-resolution screen, higher storage options, a larger battery, and a video camera with stereo audio recording for a spatial effect on headphones and external speakers. While the picture and video resolutions of the camera stayed the same, its launching speed and shutter lag improved.
It has additional software features, expanded hardware, and a redesigned physique from its predecessor, the Galaxy S II, released the previous year. The "S III" employs an intelligent personal assistant, eye-tracking ability, and increased storage. Although a wireless charging option was announced, it never came to fruition. However, there are third-party kits which add support for Qi wireless charging. Depending on country, the smartphone comes with different processors and RAM capacity, and 4G LTE support. The device was launched with Android 4.0.4 "Ice Cream Sandwich", was updated to Android 4.3 "Jelly Bean", and can be updated to Android 4.4.2 "KitKat" on variants with 2 GB of RAM. The phone's successor, the Galaxy S4, was announced on 14 March 2013 and was released the following month.
Following an 18-month development phase, Samsung unveiled the S III on 3 May 2012. The device was released in 28 European and Middle Eastern countries on 29 May 2012, before being progressively released in other major markets in June 2012. Before release, 9 million pre-orders were placed by more than 100 carriers globally. The S III was released by approximately 300 carriers in nearly 150 countries at the end of July 2012. More than 20 million units of the S III were sold within the first 100 days of release and more than 50 million until April 2013.
The S III was well-received commercially and critically, with some technology commentators touting it as the "iPhone killer". In September 2012, TechRadar ranked it as the No. 1 handset in its constantly updated list of the 20 best mobile phones, while Stuff magazine likewise ranked it at No. 1 in its list of 10 best smartphones in May 2012. The handset also won the "European Mobile Phone of 2012–13" award from the European Imaging and Sound Association, as well as T3 magazine's "Phone of the Year" award for 2012.
It played a major role in boosting Samsung's record operating profit during the second quarter of 2012., the S III is part of a high-profile lawsuit between Samsung and Apple. In November 2012, research firm Strategy Analytics announced that the S III had overtaken Apple's iPhone 4S to become the world's best-selling smartphone model in Q3 2012. Because of overwhelming demand and a manufacturing problem with the blue variant of the phone, there was an extensive shortage of the S III, especially in the United States.
The Samsung Galaxy S III was succeeded as the series flagship by the Samsung Galaxy S4 in April 2013. In April 2014, following the release of its new flagship, the Galaxy S5, Samsung released a refreshed version called the "Galaxy S III Neo", which has a quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor clocked either at 1.2 or 1.4 GHz. It has two SIM card slots, 1.5 GB of RAM, 16 GB of internal storage, comes with Android 4.3 "Jelly Bean", and lacks the screen protection and barometer.
History
Design work on the S III started in late 2010 under the supervision of Chang Dong-hoon, Samsung's vice president and Head of the Design Group of Samsung Electronics. From the start, the design group concentrated on a trend which Samsung dubs "organic", which suggests that a prospective design should reflect natural elements such as the flow of water and wind. Some of the results of this design were the curved outline of the phone and its home screen's "Water Lux" effect, where taps and slides produce water ripples.Throughout the eighteen-month design process, Samsung implemented stringent security measures and procedures to maintain secrecy of the eventual design until its launch. Designers worked on three prototypes concurrently while regarding each of them as the final product. Doing so required a constant duplication of effort, as they had to repeat the same process for all three prototypes. The prototypes, of which taking photos was forbidden, were locked in a separate laboratory, accessible only by core designers. They were transported by trusted company employees, instead of third-party couriers. "Because we were only permitted to see the products and others weren't," explained Principal Engineer Lee Byung-Joon, "we couldn't send pictures or drawings. We had to explain the Galaxy S III with all sorts of words." Despite such security measures, specifications of one of the three units were leaked by Vietnamese Web site Tinhte, although it was not the selected design.
Speculation in the general public and media outlets regarding the handset's specifications began gathering momentum several months before its formal unveiling in May 2012. In February 2012, prior to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, there were rumors that the handset would incorporate a 1.5 GHz quad-core processor, a display of 1080p resolution, a 12-megapixel rear camera and a HD Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen. More accurate rumored specifications included 2 GB of RAM, 64 GB of internal storage, 4G LTE, a screen, an 8-megapixel rear camera, and a thick chassis. Samsung confirmed the existence of the Galaxy S II's successor on 5 March 2012, but it was not until late April 2012 that Samsung's Senior Vice-president Robert Yi confirmed the phone to be called "Samsung Galaxy S III".
After inviting reporters in mid-April, Samsung launched the Galaxy S III during the Samsung Mobile Unpacked 2012 event at Earls Court Exhibition Centre, London, United Kingdom, on 3 May 2012, instead of unveiling their products earlier in the year during either the World Mobile Congress or Consumer Electronics Show. One explanation for this decision is that Samsung wanted to minimize the time between its launch and availability. The keynote address of the hour-long event was delivered by Loesje De Vriese, Marketing Director of Samsung Belgium.
Following the launch of the Galaxy S4 in June 2013, Samsung was reportedly retiring the phone earlier than planned because of low sales numbers and to streamline manufacturing operations.
Features
Hardware
Design
The S III has a plastic chassis measuring long, wide, and thick, with the device weighing. Samsung abandoned the rectangular design of the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II, and instead incorporated round corners and curved edges, reminiscent of the Galaxy Nexus. The device has been available in several color options: white, black, grey, brushed dark blue, red, and brown. A "Garnet Red" model was made available exclusively to US carrier AT&T on 15 July 2012.In addition to the touchscreen, the S III has several physical user inputs, including a home button located below the screen, an option key to the left side of the home button, a back key on the right side of the home button, a volume key on the left edge and a power/lock key on the right. At the top there is a headphone jack and one of the two microphones on the S III; the other is located below the home button.
Chipsets
The S III comes in two distinct variations that differ primarily in the internal hardware. The international S III version has Samsung's Exynos 4 Quad system on a chip containing a 1.4 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 central processing unit and an ARM Mali-400 MP graphics processing unit. According to Samsung, the Exynos 4 Quad doubles the performance of the Exynos 4 Dual used on the S II, while using 20 percent less power. Samsung had also released several 4G LTE versions—4G facilitates higher-speed mobile connection compared to 3G—in selected countries to exploit the corresponding communications infrastructures that exist in those markets. Most of these versions use Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 SoC featuring a dual-core 1.5 GHz Krait CPU and an Adreno 225 GPU. The South Korean and Australian versions are a hybrid of the international and 4G-capable versions.Sensors
Like the predecessor, the S3 is equipped with an accelerometer, gyroscope, front-facing proximity sensor, and a digital compass sensor.However, the Galaxy S3 is the first Samsung flagship phone to be equipped with a barometer sensor.
Storage
The S III has a maximum of 2 GB of RAM, depending on the model. The phone comes with either 16, 32, or 64 GB storage; additionally, microSDXC storage offers a further 64 GB for a potential total of 128 GB. Moreover, 50 GB of space is offered for two years on Dropbox—a cloud storage service—for purchasers of the device, doubling rival HTC's 25 GB storage for the same duration.Display
The S III's HD Super AMOLED display measures on the diagonal. With a 720×1280-pixel resolution, its 306 pixels per inch is a relatively high, which is accommodated by the removal of one of the three subpixels—red, green and blue—in each pixel to create a PenTile matrix-display; consequently, it does not share the "Plus" suffix found on the S II's Super AMOLED Plus display. The glass used for the display is the damage-resistant corning Gorilla Glass 2, except for S3 Neo variant. The device's software includes a feature known as "Smart Stay", which uses the device's front camera to detect whether the user's eyes are looking at the screen, and prevents the screen from automatically turning off while the user is still looking at it.Like its predecessor, the Galaxy S3 supports Mobile High-Definition Link for connection to HDMI displays. The S3 is newly equipped with Miracast support that allows wirelessly transmitting the device's display view to a supported television or Blu-ray player with integrated Miracast support.