When the Samsung Galaxy SIII was released, analysts believed that it went through a thorough stripping down at the company’s legal department to ensure that there would be no more infringement cases against it, especially from Apple. The company had seen a fair share of those with its previous phone, the Galaxy SII and the Galaxy Tab that was in fact banned in a few countries. While Samsung was careful enough to ensure that the exterior did not make any patent infringements, including things as frivolous as the thickness of the bezel on the front side of the phone, it appears that the software side has its own story of allegedly copying a few features that Apple considers as its own.
The Samsung Galaxy S III is available for purchase starting at $149 at select online retailers for the Sprint, AT&T and Verizon networks.
The Korean giant has recently stripped the Galaxy SIII of the local search feature in an effort to make it avoid any possible legal attacks from Apple. The local search feature enabled users to search for anything in the phone, be it contact data or content in a message from a unified search engine, which happened to be Apple’s patent. The latter had sued Samsung over the use of the service and in July won an injunction that led to a ban in the sales of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the Galaxy Tab 10.1.
The move appears to be a response to the injunction by Samsung in an effort to ensure that sales of the Galaxy S III are not affected. Samsung has removed local search from the Galaxy Nexus and is stripping the International version of the SIII of the service. In addition, carriers in the United States are delivering updates remotely to the phone to remove the feature.
Samsung is not the only manufacturer to remove features from phones pending lawsuits. In May, HTC phones were made devoid of a data tapping feature to prevent the ban of several models in the US. Data tapping allows the user to choose from a host of options when encountered with a phone number. HTC has changed the feature to calling the phone number by default. Also, last year, the Galaxy SII lost the bounce effect on over scrolling the screen. This effect is seen in the Apple devices and now the edge of the screen just glows when the user attempts to scroll beyond its boundaries. Android phones were also forced to tweak the sliding mechanism to unlock the screen as it was supposed to be an Apple patent. You can buy the Samsung Galaxy S III starting at $149.
