Samsung Galaxy SIII: 9 things to know

South Korea's Samsung Electronics has unveiled its latest flagship smartphone -- unveiled Galaxy SIII in the country. One of the most-awaited phones of 2012, Samsung Galaxy SIII (SAMSUNG GALAXY S3)  succeeds company's Galaxy SII.

Here are nine things to know about the Samsung's all-new smartphone Samsung Galaxy SIII.
Runs on Android 4.0

Samsung Galaxy S III runs on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). However, the default user interface of the OS is TouchWiz Nature UX, a custom skin prepared by Samsung.

Screen is 22% bigger than SII

Samsung's latest Galaxy phone sports a 4.8-inch touchscreen with an HD Super Amoled display at 1280 x 720 pixels. Overall, the screen is reportedly 22% larger than Samsung Galaxy SII.

Has 8 Mega Pixel Camera

Samsung Galaxy SIII comes with an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with a zero-lag shutter speed to provide instant image-capturing. There's also a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera.

Has Siri rival 'S'

A feature similar to Siri on iPhone, Galaxy SIII has 'S' Voice that will help users in doing several tasks through voice commands. A demo at the launch event showed how a user can use the voice command feature to play a song, for example. Samsung claims that 'S' voice goes beyond earlier voice recognition technology from Samsung.

Thickness & weight

The smartphone has 16GB of internal memory. This can be expanded with a microSD card. Samsung said the Galaxy SIII will have a 2,100 mAh battery. The phone weighs 133 gram and has a thickness of 8.6mm.

Runs on Samsung's latest Chip

The phone has Samsung's new Arm-based processor Exynos 4 Quad. The 1.4 Ghz quad-core chip is based on the ARM Cortex A9 and enables more tasks in a shorter period of time claims the company. 

Samsung claims that it is the first quad-core processor built on the High-k Metal Gate (HKMG) low-power process technology. Other features of the processor include a video hardware codec engine for 1080p/30fps video recording and playback and an HDMI 1.4 interface.

Comes with free DropBox storage

Every user of Galaxy SIII smartphone will get free 50GB cloud storage from Dropbox, according to the company. This means the storage for Galaxy SIII users will be double of what Dropbox is giving HTC One series owners. The storage will, however, be valid for two years only.

Price and availability in India

Samsung Galaxy SIII has launched at an MRP of Rs 42,180 in India. However market price is expected to be lower by a few thousands rupees.

Courtesy: The Times Of India

Samsung Galaxy Y Pro Duos Review

Samsung Galaxy Y Pro Duos is the latest budget Android smartphone offering from Samsung's basket. It is very similar to the Galaxy Y Duos except that now there's room for a front camera as well. With dual-SIM Android phones buzzing around already, can this one hold its ground? We take a look.

Design & Build
The Galaxy Y Pro Duos in its candy bar form factor feels incredibly light at 112 grams. The phone fits comfortably in your palm. We received a metallic black unit which was well designed with curved edges on the top and bottom. The back panel is plastic-made and comes off easily. It is a touch-cum-QWERTY phone so it makes life easier. The screen dimensions seemed to have been reduced as a result. But this being a QWERTY smartphone, you can't really expect a big display.

The smartphone houses a 3.2MP rear camera and a front facing VGA camera for video calling as well. The power button is placed on the right while the volume rocker finds room on the left. The bottom houses the charging/USB port, while the 3.5mm audio jack is located on the top.

Once the back panel comes off, you see the battery, below which are the dual-SIM slots. The microSD slot is located on the top-right.

The QWERTY keypad is neatly laid out and feels very comfortable to use for typing. The standard Menu, Home, Back and Search buttons are distributed on either side of an Optical trackpad that also make navigation easier.

The Galaxy Y Pro Duos came with a charger, a USB cable, a pair of headphones, 3 pairs of earplugs, a warranty card and a quick start guide in the box.

Display
The Y Pro Duos sports a 2.6-inch capacitive TFT LCD display with a resolution of 320x240 pixels. The colours look decent enough even in broad daylight, although the text seemed a little blurry.

What's interesting is that the screen orientation is available in both portrait and landscape modes. The latter doesn't make sense at all with the screen size being so small and feels really weird.

Camera Quality
At 3.2MP, you can't expect wonders but even so, the camera is decent enough for a budget smartphone. There is no flash, so pictures taken in the dark won't impress you much, while images taken in day-light are just OK.

Samsung Galaxy Y Pro Duos camera supports video recording upto a resolution of 320x240 pixels and once you shoot a video, you also have the option to trim them. Basic settings include white balance adjustments, resolution selection, self-timer and scene modes.

OS & Interface
The Galaxy Y Pro Duos comes with Android Gingerbread (v2.3.6) which seems outdated nowadays with Ice cream Sandwich Android phones already available in the market. Samsung's traditional TouchWiz interface allows for a satisfactory operability experience. There are 3 customisable homescreens and the menu isn't cluttered with too many pre-loaded apps.

The 832 MHz single core processor performs well enough to allow multi-tasking without too much lag. The device also comes with 384MB of RAM that feels very less and the memory can be expanded upto 32GB via microSD card slot.

Pre-loaded software
As we mentioned earlier, there aren't many pre-installed apps apart from the standard Google ones like Gtalk, YouTube, Maps and Gmail. Even must haves like Facebook and Twitter were missing. We however downloaded them from the Play Store and they worked just fine. Polaris Office is useful for accessing and reading your documents.

You can also access Samsung's stock app store, Samsung Apps to download free or paid apps after you've signed-up.

Performance
The phone is an average performer and there's no wow moment involved. Dual SIM functionality is limited in the sense that while you can keep personal and official numbers separate, you can use only one SIM at a time for calls. You can also choose your SIM preference from the notifications menu.

The standard Li-ion 1350mAh battery lasts for a full day without you having to reach for the charger . Both the 3G and Wi-Fi experience were good and the battery didn't give up on us while surfing the web, watching videos, making calls or running multiple applications.


The audio quality of the phone again, isn't very great on both, the speaker phone and the headphones that came along with it. A disappointing fact with regard to the FM Radio is that you can set only four radio stations at a time and not more.

When playing YouTube videos, they seemed a bit pixelated, though they played fine without lags.

We fired up a game of Angry Birds Space and the multi-touch experience wasn't smooth enough. You can't really see the target and have to guess your aim in most scenarios.

The stock browser supports Adobe flash and the surfing experience was decent without too many hiccups while using both 3G and Wi-Fi.

Verdict
With many budget dual-SIM phones flooding the market, the Galaxy Y Pro Duos doesn't put something extraordinary on the table. It is a decent performer that just about gets the work done. All features are pretty basic that you'd get with any budget Android phone. The introduction of an optical trackpad, though makes navigation easier can be confusing since it takes a while to getting used to with the touch screen in place. We're sure you've heard the phrase, 'out of sight, out of mind'. This one is sure to be in that list.


Pros
Optical trackpad makes navigation easy
Touch and type at an affordable price

Cons
Poor camera
No Multi-touch

Price: Rs. 9,500

Ratings
Performance: 3
Features: 3.5
Ease of setup: 3.5
Ergonomics: 4
Wow factor: 3
Value for money: 3.5
Overall: 3.5


Courtesy: Gadgets @ NDTV

Samsung Galaxy S3, next-generation Android smartphone to launch in India soon

THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S3

NEW DELHI: Samsung on Thursday unveiled Galaxy S3, its next-generation Android smartphone, at an event in London. The phone is powered by Exynos 4212, a quad-core processor running at 1.4GHz. It is expected to become available in India in the coming weeks.

The phone has a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED screen with a resolution of 720P, 1GB RAM, 16/32GB storage with a slot for microSD card, 8MP camera with burst mode, zero shutter lag and backlit sensor, 2,100mAh battery, Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth. The phone weighs 133 grams and has a thickness of 8.6mm.

One of the unique features in Galaxy S3 is its ability to track the eye movement of the user. Samsung calls the feature SmartStay and claims it will make using Galaxy S3 more intuitive. The phone also has S Voice, a feature similar to Siri on iPhone, that will help users in doing several tasks through voice commands.

Galaxy S3 runs on Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android operating software. However, the default user interface of the OS is TouchWiz Nature UX, a custom skin prepared by Samsung.

Galaxy S3 is one of the most anticipated phones of the year so far. It succeeds Galaxy S2. In February, Samsung had said that it had sold over 20 million units of Galaxy S2 since introducing it in the market in April last year.

Samsung's official Twitter account said on Wednesday that the company would not launch Galaxy Nexus India but consumers should not feel dejected because new and better phone would be arriving soon, hinting at S3 launch here in May.

Samsung, which started selling Galaxy range of phones in 2010, has emerged as the biggest Android phone maker. In fact, helped by the sale of Galaxy Note and Galaxy S2, the firm recently became the largest phone vendor in the world, ending Nokia's 14 years reign at the top. According to IDC, a market research firm, Samsung shipped 93.8 million phones in Q1, 2012 compared to 82.7 million phones shipped by Nokia.

In smartphone category, the firm ousted Apple from the top position. It shipped 42.2 million smartphones compared to Apple's 35.1 million iPhones. Apple, however, continues to be the world's biggest smartphone maker in terms of profit.


Information Courtesy: Gadgets @ Times Of India

Samsung Galaxy SIII coming in May

SAMSUNG GALAXY SIII (S3)

SEOUL: Samsung Electronics Co said on Monday it would unveil the third-generation of its flagship smartphone Galaxy S on May 3 in London, banking on a heavy marketing campaign heading into the summer Olympics in the city. 

Samsung became the world's top smartphone maker last year on the back of strong sales of Galaxy lineups and the latest edition comes after it released Galaxy S II in late April last year. 

The South Korean firm sold over 40 million Galaxy smartphones since the model was released in June 2010. 

Samsung, which dominates in the top end of smartphone market along with Apple Inc, estimated earlier this month that its first-quarter operating profit would hit a record 5.8 trillion Korean won thanks to strong sales of Galaxy series smartphones. 

Its current sponsorship deal with the International Olympics Committee runs out in 2016. It has said its market share in China doubled after the 2008 Beijing Olympics. 


It was reported earler this week that Samsung Electronics Co, Apple's biggest competitor in the market for iPad-sized tablet computers, is updating its line to include a feature that lets a tablet act as a universal remote control for an entertainment center. 

The storage space on the new Galaxy Tab 2 will also be expandable with small memory cards. The tablets will come in two sizes. The 7-inch version will cost $250 and goes on sale April 22. The 10-inch version will cost $400 and goes on sale May 13.


Courtesy: Times Of India