Samsung’s 80-minute London unveiling event yesterday, where the company introduced the quad-core Samsung Galaxy S III, had all the markings of a high-profile Apple event. The company made multiple announcements, showing off some flashy new accompanying technologies that again keep the Korean OEM neck-and-neck with the iPhone maker.
All told, Samsung has arguably introduced the most spec-d out “superphone” on the market to date. The Galaxy S III comes running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and features a 1.4 GHz quad-core Samsung Exynos processor, 1GB RAM, 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED touchscreen, NFC, 8-megapixel camera, 2100 mAh battery. The phone comes in 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB models.
Samsung has also partnered with Dropbox to offer registered users of the handset 50 GB of cloud-based storage for free.
As side orders to the main dish, Samsung served up other peripheral technologies, all of which appear squarely aimed at either matching Apple or eclipsing its main rival. The company went so far as to release S Voice, a direct competitor to Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri. Equally Apple-ish, and also aimed at meeting HTC’s MediaLink HD which launched alongside the HTC One X, is the Samsung AllPlay dongle, which connects to a TV and allows users to stream content, or mirror their smartphones, on the living room flat panel.
On the software side of things, the Galaxy S III gives birth to Buddy Share, which uses facial recognition to identify subjects in a photograph in order to allow one-touch sharing with those pictured. Samsung has also preloaded S Health, which it’s referring to as a personal wellness app, as well as the cloud-based Music Hub. Music Hub includes a matching service, similar to Apple’s iTunes Match, which scans a user’s native music library and then matches that music to tracks contained in a cloud-based library.
The HSPA+ version of the Galaxy S will be available May 29 in the U.K. on Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange and Three, as well as through Carphone Warehouse. Carphone Warehouse currently lists the phone for an unsubsidized $807, while Three is offering it up for a $55 monthly tariff.
Wireless customers in the United States will have to wait a little longer on an LTE-capable version of the phone, which will arrive in here sometime in June.
Yesterday’s announcements should serve to invigorate the company’s healthy head-to-head battle with Apple for the top of the lion’s share of the smartphone market. Recent numbers from IDC show Samsung shipped 42.2 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2012, followed by Apple (35.1 million) and Nokia (11.9 million).
To check out the entire presentation from Samsung’s event yesterday, check out the video posted online here.
