Samsung announced the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini, a smaller version of the popular Galaxy S3, which reached 20 million sales in its first three months on shelves. In fact, the phone became T Mobiles all time best-selling device.
"The GALAXY S III introduced a new concept of smartphone that has proven hugely popular around the world. We're now delighted to bring its revolutionary design, intuitive usability and intelligence to the GALAXY S III mini in a more compact form," said JK Shin, President and Head of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics. "We continue to make every effort to provide extraordinary mobile experiences to meet a wide variety of user needs."
The new phone has a 4-inch screen and a resolution of 800 x 400, a 1 GHZ dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, a 5MP camera and a 1500mAh battery. All of these specifications are scale back from the regular sized Galaxy S3 model. It also runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the latest version of Google's mobile operating system.
Visually, the new mini is nearly identical to its big brother. According to Samsung, "its ultra-minimal curved frame delivers a rich natural feel, which is also reflected on its nature-inspired home screen, wallpapers and ringtones."
The Mini also share other features with the Samsung Galaxy S3 like Samsung's Touchwiz overlay, S Voice, Pop up Play and S Beam NFC smarts. The Galaxy S3 Mini also recognizes users gestures and the phone's camera tracks the users eyes and keeps the screen lit as long as the user is looking at it.
The phone also shares Samsung's S Beam feature that lets users share a 10MB music file in just two seconds by simply tapping on another S Beam-enabled device including Galaxy S3 or Galaxy Note II.
Samsung made no statement about when the device will officially be released or how much the device will cost. But it can be speculated that it will cost less than the larger Galaxy S3.