Samsung Electronics, the world's largest maker of smartphones, on Thursday unveiled the Galaxy S III mini, a compact version of the flagship smartphone Galaxy S III. The novelty brings the high performance, intuitive ease-of-use and nature-inspired design of the Galaxy S III to an elegant, compact form-factor smartphone with a 4.0" screen.

“The Galaxy S III introduced a new concept of smartphone that has proven hugely popular around the world. We are now delighted to bring its revolutionary design, intuitive usability and intelligence to the Galaxy S III mini in a more compact form. We continue to make every effort to provide extraordinary mobile experiences to meet a wide variety of user needs,” said JK Shin, president and head of IT & mobile communications division at Samsung Electronics.

Samsung Galaxy S III Mini (GT-I8190) features 4" super AMOLED display with 800*480 resolution and is based on ST-Ericsson STE U8420 (two ARM Cortex-A9 cores, ARM Mali 400 graphics adapter, LPDDR2 memory controller, integrated modem) system-on-chip clocked at 1GHz. The smartphone is equipped with 5MP rear camera with LED flash and autofocus, 640*480 front camera; 1GB of random access memory; 16GB internal NAND flash storage + microSD slot' Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n, GPS/Glonass, DLNA, NFC, FM radio, micro USB, 3.5mm TRRS connector; accelerometer, digital compass, proximity and gyro sensors, 1500mAh battery and so on. The device comes with Google Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" operating system.

The Galaxy S III mini is packed with intelligent technology designed to make interacting with the phone natural and intuitive. S Voice, Samsung’s advanced natural language recognition software, lets to use voice to unlock the phone with simple customized commands, or to play favorite songs, turn the volume up or down, organize schedule, or automatically launch the camera and start taking photos. Thanks to NFC, the Galaxy S III mini also supports S Beam technology for easier sharing of content.

The Galaxy S III mini also understands gestures; with Smart Stay, the phone’s camera tracks owner's eyes and keeps the screen lit as long as he or she is looking at it. When reading a text message from a friend, Direct Call enables to automatically dial a call simply by lifting the phone to an ear; and Smart Alert conveniently reminds about missed calls or messages as soon as the phone is picked up.

The Galaxy S III mini shares the Galaxy S III’s design and simple elegance. Its ultra-minimal curved frame delivers a natural feel, which is also reflected on its nature-inspired home screen, wallpapers and ringtones. Its compact size gives users a comfortable grip and allows a convenient one-hand operation. The smartphone has 121.55mm*63mm*9.85mm dimensions and weights 111.5 grams.

Price of the Samsung Galaxy S III mini will vary from country to country.

Tags: Samsung, Galaxy, Android, Google