The arrival of the Samsung Galaxy S III to the speedy Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network was announced on June 4 last year. By the time it was released on July 12, the handset was available in 16 GB and 32 GB versions, and immediately became the flagship smartphone for Big Red. A global powerhouse which was the first smartphone ever to outsell an iPhone while both devices were represented at the same wireless carriers, the Galaxy S III has shown no signs of slowing down, and has sold more than 40 million units globally.
Available in multiple colors, the handset offers the Jelly Bean 4.1 operating system out-of-the-box, coupled with the TouchWiz UX UI Android overlay. Offered in either blue or white in the 32 GB version, that phone was recently spotted with a reduced retail price tag of $199 on contract at the Amazon Wireless store online. Slim and light, the Verizon Galaxy S III measures 0.34 inches (8.6 mm) in size, weighing in at 4.70 ounces (133 g). Despite the razor thin profile, the handset delivers a large 4.0 inch Super AMOLED screen with 720 x 1,280 pixel resolution. A layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 2 protects that display, which offers a high-end pixel density at 306 pixels per inch.
More than 16 million independent colors are present on that screen, which supports standard capacitive, multitouch gestures. With light and proximity sensors helping to conserve battery life, the 2,100 mA cell on board the Verizon Galaxy S III offers a full 15.0 hours of talk time from a single charge. A single charge can also produce 8.3 days of standby battery power, and Samsung chose a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960 microchip package to power the device.
At its base is a dual core 1.5 GHz Krait CPU, joined in that chip suite by an Adreno 225 graphics processor. The generous 32 GB of built-in storage space can be accentuated through the microSD slot, which supports external memory cards up to 64 GB in size. The Verizon Galaxy S III also comes equipped with a full 2.0 GB of RAM. Like most smartphones these days, the handset delivers a chat cam/camcorder camera combo, with the front facing chat cam offering video call support. Simultaneous HD video and image capture is supported by the rear facing 8.0 megapixel camcorder, which records video at a rate of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels (1,080p HD resolution).
