If a cell phone moves more than 60 million units in its lifetime, it is immediately regarded, rightfully so, as one of the bestselling mobile handsets ever. That is a distinction that the Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone currently owns, having recently passed that incredible milestone. When the handset first arrived way back in June of 2012, it was riding on the coattails of the successful Galaxy S and the Galaxy S II smartphones which preceded it. The Galaxy S II improved on the sales and popularity of the original Galaxy S, and the Galaxy S III has outperformed the S2 so far.
With an extremely slim and light form factor when you consider the size of the display and the amount of hardware the Galaxy S III delivers, the handset was instantly popular for those shoppers who desired an extremely large and high resolution screen with without a “brick in your pocket” bulky form factor. Recently the blue Verizon Galaxy S III in the 16 GB version was spotted at the select online retailers for just $19 on contract. The slim phone measures just 5.39 x 2.80 x 0.34 inches (137 x 71 x 8.6 mm) in size, weighing in at a light 4.70 ounces (133 g).
The phone also received some good news recently, as Samsung promised that all of their Galaxy S III and Galaxy S4 smartphones in the United States would be receiving a bump up to the Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system, and that the roll-out would begin over the air in October. The company stopped short of naming an exact launch date, as different wireless carriers will no doubt handle the firmware upgrade differently. The Galaxy S III boasts a large 4.80 inch True HD display with 720 by 1,280 pixel resolution, with more than 16 million colors spread across the screen at the rate of 306 pixels per inch.
Corning Gorilla Glass 2 offers protection against your everyday abuse, while special light and proximity sensors automate certain tasks and help conserve battery power. The 2,100 mA cell on the Galaxy S III is capable of a full 15.0 hours of talk time after a full battery charge, and the phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960 microchip package. A dual core 1.5 GHz CPU anchors that chip set, 2.0 GB of RAM memory is on board, and the built-in microSD slot supports external memory cards up to 64 GB in size.
The blue 16 GB Verizon Galaxy S III is capable of recording high definition video at 1,080P HD resolution, while simultaneously grabbing image snapshots. That feature is delivered by the rear facing 8.0 megapixel camcorder, which joins a front facing chat cam with video call support in the phone’s camera combo. That rear snapper provides a multi-shot burst mode, high dynamic range mode (HDR), panorama mode, a self timer and extensive special effects package. Facebook, YouTube (upload), Picasa and Twitter social networking applications have been pre-installed.
