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Samsung Galaxy S3 Revealed
Samsung finally launched its much anticipated flagship product at Earl’s Court, London. While it confirmed many rumors that were perpetuated about the device, it also showcased a few features that were not heard of such as S-Beam which is similar to Android Beam.
The specifications for the device are a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display, a 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos processor, 1GB of RAM, an 8MP rear camera with LED flash, a 1.9MP front facing camera for video chatting, near-field-communication (NFC), Bluetooth, Wi-Fi connectivity, wireless charging capability, a 2100mAh battery, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and it is only 8.6mm thin with a weight of 133grams. The global rollout will begin in Europe on May 29th with the US version landing in June allegedly.
The phone does have some interesting new features such as eye-tracking so it can tell when your eyes are trained on it and will subsequently keep the screen on, S-Voice which performs tasks like its iOS counterpart, Siri, Direct Call which calls a person you are texting when you lift the phone up to your ears and Smart Alert which informs users of missed calls, messages or emails by vibrating gently when the phone gets physically picked up. Samsung has added a plethora of accessories for the device such as the wireless charging kit and its ‘pebble’ mp3 player especially for the Galaxy S3.
With regards to the camera, there is a new feature of the burst shots which apparently takes about 20 pictures when used at a frequency of 3.3 pictures a second after which it will choose the best 8 for your perusal. Apparently, what that means is that the ones that are slightly blurry will not make the cut and the phone does it for you, so you don’t have to. Have you seen the Samsung Galaxy S3 yet? Do you think it is amazing or that it isn’t your cup of tea?
The Fairphone 2 was first unveiled in June earlier this year, where this particular handset carried a modular design while featuring majority of its components that have been sourced from conflict-free mines. It seems that this particular handset that you can purchase with a clear conscience has begun to ship to those who happen to live across Europe.
Fairphone announced in a blog post, “It’s been almost two years in the making, and some of the earliest buyers have been patiently waiting since July to receive their new phones. As community manager, I want to personally welcome the new batch of Fairphone owners to our community.” The initial 1,000 units are tipped to ship this month, before the other pre-orders follow in January 2016.
In terms of hardware specifications, the Fairphone 2 will run on a Snapdragon 801 chipset, has a 5″ 1080p screen with Gorilla Glass 3 protection, 2GB of RAM, an 8MP camera, with Android 5.1 Lollipop in tow. It will be a dual SIM capable handset with a microSD memory card slot and plays nice with 4G LTE networks, retailing for approximately €525 a pop.
It looks like the upcoming flagship model from Xiaomi will feature NFC support, at least based on a document that was released by China UnionPay. Just in case you are scratching your head and wondering who China UnionPay is, they happen to be the only domestic payment gateway supplier and card organization, and hence, to see them offer detailed support concerning the newly released NFC-based payment system points to the very real possibility of the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 5 featuring NFC capability.
After all, the Xiaomi Mi 3 was also mentioned on the list, which so happens to feature NFC, and there is no mention of the Xiaomi Mi 4 which does not come with NFC. Still, such a new payment system would be the ideal tool to see the reintroduction of NFC to the flagship model.
OnePlus did make an announcement in the previous month that the Ceramic variant of the OnePlus X will be released on November 24. True to their word, they did exactly that – although only a pitiful number of units were made available, and not only that, this was through a charity auction. Thankfully for the rest of the masses who are on the lookout for this device, it has gone on sale officially already.
Needless to say, this particular variant is available only by an invitation, although do bear in mind that standard OnePlus X invites are not good here – you will still need to snag yourself a specific Ceramic variant invite before you make a purchase. OnePlus is also on the lookout to offer additional methods of picking up this smartphone, although no further details were revealed.
The OnePlus X Ceramic will be available only in select markets, where among them include Europe, India, and Hong Kong. To date, we do know that OnePlus had made only 10,000 units of the handset available. A case of the early bird getting the proverbial worm here?