Samsung Galaxy SIII Mini : An affordable & good phone

Samsung released their most rumoured phone Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini. It is the smaller brother of the phablet Samsung Galaxy S3.The device was announced on October 2012, but arrived only on last month Indian markets.

On the first look, it looks like its elder sibling Galaxy S3. The similarities will feel only on the first look. After viewing the phone deep, everybody will ask one question; is the smaller one more beautiful? The device has a very less similarities with its brother Galaxy S3.

The hate thing that is found in the phone is the lack of 4G LTE and the problem of a slow CPU. The device is for those who were waiting for an all-feature, stylish and small and low-cost Galaxy.

The phone is a Mid-Range Android in the crowded market. The device has S voice and DLNA as a high end features, which can be seen in a very few Samsung phones.

There hasn’t been any announcement from Samsung about the price or availability. Samsung has released mini versions of their high-end phone like Samsung Galaxy SII before. Let’s take a look at the phones specs and features.

Design

The phone shows the real talent of Samsung. As we all know phones below 4-inch and 4-inch is now known as mini smartphones. The Mini S3 sports a 4-inch Super AMOLED WVGA display with 16M colours, which are 800 x 480 pixels. The screen has a curved design with the 4 edges as curved.

The device gives 233ppi quality display, where the S3 has 305.96ppi. The resolution is good within a 4-inch phone. The body of the phone is 121.6 x 63 x 9.9 mm. The phone weights 111.5g.

The Galaxy S3 Mini looks almost identical to the Galaxy S3. The original S3’s design is glossy but sleek. The S3 mini comes in two colour variants white and purple blue.

Performance and features

The device is a copy of the S3 in design. Under the hood the mini S3 is totally different. The phone has a 1 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 processor. The original has a 1.GHz processor, but the 1GHz is enough for a 4-inch phone but the CPU totally is slow.

The device uses Android v4.1. The chipset used in the phone is NovaThor U8420. GPU of the phone is Mali-400

The speed of the phone is enough for more users but is not on a top speed. The 2GB RAM in the original S3 is replaced by a 1GB RAM. The device has choice for storage as 8GB and 16GB. It also allows microSD up to 32GB.

The camera in the mini S3 is 5MP, which is 8MP in the original S3. But it still comes with LED flash and auto focus. The camera is 2592x1944 pixels.

The front camera has gone down to a VGA camera from 1.9MP in the S3. Samsung has used 5MP camera before but this is somewhat different. It gives more clear pictures and the quality of the images taken is good.

Video at 720p with 30fps can be captured with the camera. The other features of the camera are Geo-tagging, touch focus, and face detection.

The device comes with connectivity such as Bluetooth v4.0 with A2DP, LE, and EDR. The data transfer speed of the phone is HSDPA 14.4 Mbps, and HSUPA 5.76 Mbps. The phone comes with WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, and WiFi hotspot.

NFC is also included in the phone. The battery of the phone is Li-Ion 1500 mAh battery, which is 2,100mAh in original S3. The battery provides a stand-by up to 450 h in 2G and Up to 430 h in 3G. Talk time provided by the battery is up to 14 h 10 min in 2G and Up to 7 h 10 min in 3G.

The sensors in the phone are Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, and compass. Other features of the phone are 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, and  Predictive text input (Swype).

The phone also supports Java via Java MIDP emulator. GPS with A-GPS support and GLONASS are also included in the phone.

OS and Software

The device runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which is the second latest Android OS. The device comes with Samsung Touch Wiz interface.

There are many other Apps and Softwares. The device comes with many other extras such as the photo-sharing features among networked phones, and S Beam, used for file-sharing using NFC.

S Voice is also included in the phone. The S voice is the answer by Google with Samsung to Apple’s Siri. But the S Voice disappoints us; it doesn’t perform well, when compared to Siri.

There are other great features in the phone, including the app that keeps the screen lit when you glance at the camera. DLNA is the phone helps to share files like videos and photos between devices such as TV.

All this features uses lots of battery power and it also slows down the phone, this one of the main cause for the slow CPU.

After Words

The Mini S3 is packed with lots of features. The device is totally good and affordable for mid-range people. The smaller device is a good idea by the company. The device is less powerful, but I don’t think it is such a big problem for those who were waiting for a tier brand’s feature-filled phone.

The 4-inch small screen is one of the highlight of the device. The device is not at all a big challenge for Apple because they don’t have such small phones. My only opinion is that if the company make the device more powerful, it would be a good thing. Any way the device is a good choice and the affordable price of Rs 18,190 attract people.

Watch this video to know more about the phone>>>