The actual Galaxy S3 is still very much top of Samsung's smartphone tree, so don't be confused by this stripped down alternative -- it looks like a slightly smaller S3 at first glance, but sits quite a few branches further down, with a slower processor, duller screen, less capable camera and a rather inflated asking price.
It's on sale now for around £290.
Despite the name, the S3 Mini has little in common with the original S3. But despite a considerably lower spec it's still a pretty decent smartphone with a decent level of performance. However, the game-changing price point of the Google Nexus 4 (around £239) which offers a quad-core processor, better screen and camera, plus the very latest Android, makes it seem very expensive for what's on offer.
Specs Galaxy S III mini:
GENERAL
- 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
- 3G Network HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100
SIM
- Mini-SIM
BODY
- Dimensions 121.6 x 63 x 9.9 mm (4.79 x 2.48 x 0.39 in)
- Weight 111.5 g (3.92 oz)
DISPLAY
- Type Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
- Size 480 x 800 pixels, 4.0 inches (~233 ppi pixel density)
- Multitouch
SOUND
- Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
- Loudspeaker
- 3.5mm jack
MEMORY
- Card slot: microSD, up to 32 GB
- Internal: 8/16 GB, 1 GB RAM
DATA
- GPRS
- EDGE
- HSDPA 14.4 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
WLAN
- Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot
- Bluetooth Yes, v4.0 with A2DP, LE, EDR
- NFC (Market dependent)
- USB
- Yes, microUSB v2.0
CAMERA
- Primary: 5 MP, 2592x1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, check quality
- Features: Geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection
- Video 720p@30fps, check quality
- Secondary VGA
FEATURES
- OS Android OS, v4.1 (Jelly Bean)
- Chipset NovaThor U8420
- CPU 1 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9
- GPU Mali-400
- Sensors Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
- Messaging SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Mail, IM, RSS
- Browser HTML5
- Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS
- GPS Yes, with A-GPS support and GLONASS
- Java Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
- SNS integration
- MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264/H.263 player
- MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC player
- Organizer
- Image/video editor
- Document viewer
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail,
- YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Picasa
- Voice memo/dial/commands
- Predictive text input (Swype)
BATTERY
- Li-Ion 1500 mAh battery
- Stand-by Up to 450 h (2G) / Up to 430 h (3G)
- Talk time Up to 14 h 10 min (2G) / Up to 7 h 10 min (3G)