The Samsung Galaxy S III 4G Android smartphone originally arrived in the US as exclusive to the AT&T wireless network. However, that handset also made its way over to the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network and is now available from all four major US wireless service providers. Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T recently lowered the retail price of their Galaxy S III to $149 with a standard new two-year activation and data plan at select retailers. The Galaxy line of smartphones has been super successful for Samsung, and the Galaxy S III has done nothing to erode the consumer confidence and loyalty that has been shown to the Galaxy line.
Ultra-thin at 0.34 inches (8.6 mm) and light at 4.70 ounces (133 g), the handset arrives in the typical smartphone form factor as a rectangular slab. Offered in your choice of either a Marble White or Pebble Blue body, the Galaxy S III 4G Android smartphone delivers Android’s 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) operating system out-of-the-box with the Samsung TouchWiz UX UI overlay, and accepts multitouch gestures to navigate the device.
The display on the Samsung Galaxy S III for Verizon is one of the largest you will find on any mobile handset in either 3G or 4G. The 4.80 inch screen is protected by a second generation layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 2, and delivers visuals in over 16 million different colors and at a pixel density of 306 pixels per inch. That gives the display one of the highest resolutions found on any smartphone, at 720 x 1,280 pixels. The Super AMOLED screen has a light sensor built in which automatically adjusts for the best display brightness, and the proximity sensor on board dims the handset’s display when you lift the phone to your face to make or receive a call, conserving battery life.
Those battery conservation efforts team up with the 2,100 mA cell to offer 15.00 hours of talk time from a single charge, nearly double the 4G average. Continuing in the hardware profile is a Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon microchip package charged with running the handset, which includes a dual core 1.5 GHz central processor and Adreno 225 GPU which handles all graphics processing. The Galaxy S III for Verizon is one of the first handsets to deliver 2.0 GB of RAM system memory, and a 4G-best 32 GB of storage are built-in. MicroSD, microSDHC and microSDXC cards are supported up to 64 GB in size.
The Samsung Galaxy S III is one of the first handsets to provide simultaneous high-resolution image and video recording in stereo sound, and video capture is offered at 1,080P HD resolution. That is provided by the 8.0 megapixel camcorder found on the back of the handset, and a VGA quality chat cam is located up front. A built-in music player is present, and the Galaxy S III for Verizon comes preloaded with Facebook, YouTube, Picasa and Twitter applications. You can buy the Samsung Galaxy S III starting at $149.
