Samsung Galaxy S III: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, U.S. Cellular this month
Will Samsung's Galaxy S III be your next BYOD buddy?
The smartphone will arrive on five, count 'em, five American wireless carriers this month -- Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular -- in a fashion that harkens to storming the beaches of Normandy.
(Hyperbole? Almost definitely. But it's rare to see such a wide release for a phone, even for Apple's iPhone.)
Here's what you need to know about the Galaxy S3:
- It's 4G (a.k.a. LTE and HSPA+)
- It weighs 4.7 ounces
- It is 8.6 millimeters thick (about one-third of an inch for you fans of the Imperial system)
- It's got a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass 2.0
- It runs Google Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) with Samsung's TouchWiz overlay
- It runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 1.5 GHz dual-core CPU with 2GB of internal RAM
- It has a removable 2100 mAh battery
- It has 16GB or 32GB of onboard storage, as well as an expansion slot
There are a few other things of note. Samsung is pushing its content-sharing service, AllShare Play, which aims to facilitate sharing files between multiple devices -- HDTVs, tablets, laptops, and so forth. A "Group Cast" feature allows for document, presentation or image collaboration between multiple users, and a "Share Shot" feature allows someone in a group to share photos automatically and locally, which should come in handy during those office parties. (Or...not.) And the "S-Beam" feature allows two Galaxy S III owners to share a large file over (what I *believe* is) a Wi-Fi Direct connection.
Finally: Samsung's "S-Voice" feature is a not-quite-Siri speech recognition layer, and its "Smart Stay" feature tracks your eyes to make sure the display is on when you're looking at it -- which is both an odd problem to have and a creepy solution to it.
What's the price, you ask? You'll have to wait until your preferred carrier announces it. In the meantime, you should watch my CNET colleague Jessica Dolcourt's hands-on take on the device from this year's CTIA show.