Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III preview: Second encounter

Introduction

There's no need for us to tell you how important the Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III is for both its own manufacturer and the Android world in general - our daily interest stats speak for themselves. Given the predecessor was really something special, what everyone wants to know now is whether or not the new Samsung flagship has what it takes to fill its boots.

Samsung Galaxy SIII official shots

The Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III seems to bring all the latest and greatest technology in the mobile world under one roof. The quad-core CPU and the HD screen are taking most of the credit here, but the S III has quite a lot more to offer, as you can see in the list below.

Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III at a glance:

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 850/900/1900/2100 MHz, HSDPA 21 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
• Form factor: Touchscreen bar phone
• Dimensions: 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm, 133 g
• Display: 4.8" 16M-color HD (720 x 1280 pixels) Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, Gorilla Glass 2
• Chipset: Exynos 4212 Quad
• CPU: Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 1.4 GHz processor
• GPU: Mali-400MP
• RAM: 1GB
• OS: Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) Memory: 16/32/64GB storage, microSD card slot
• Camera: 8 megapixel auto-focus camera with backlit sensor, face detection, touch focus and image stabilization; Full HD (1080p) video recording at 30fps, LED flash, 2MP front facing camera, video-calls
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, FM radio, TV-out, USB-on-the-go, NFC Battery: 2100 mAh
• Misc: TouchWiz 4.0 UI, Extremely rich video/audio codec support, built-in accelerometer, multi-touch input, proximity sensor, gyroscope sensor, RGB sensor, Smart stay eye-tracking, S Voice natural language commands and dictation

A lengthy list for sure and pretty impressive for the most part. In addition to plenty of extra screen estate, resolution and processing power, the Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III brings a new, much larger battery, the futuristic eye-tracking technology, along with some other cool software tricks up its sleeve.

In fact, of all the rumored goodies, the non-PenTile screen and the 12 megapixel camera are the only ones which didn't make the cut, but we are not sure you should feel too sorry about that. The subpixel density is still on par with what the S II offered, while the camera got a whole new sensor, so it might still turn out to be a nice upgrade.

Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III in our office

Just looking at the spec sheet should be enough to convince you that the Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III is a good phone. But good is certainly not enough when you are succeeding the most popular Android smartphone to date and competing with a beast of a phone in the HTC One X. The S III needs to be great, but we'll only know that for sure after some quality time with it.

Join us on the next page as we start exploring the hardware of the new Samsung top dog.