Samsung’s UK unveil event of the Galaxy S3 was filled with lots of imagery, but was a little light on explaining how things actually worked. The phone stares back at you when you stare into it, the phone knows when you want to make a call, and knows when your boss is trying to call you. In some ways, the GS3 sounds downright creepy.
Now that some time has passed, we’re able to shed some of the fluff from the presentation, and point out some great features that will ship on the Galaxy S3.
Now that some time has passed, we’re able to shed some of the fluff from the presentation, and point out some great features that will ship on the Galaxy S3.
Smart Stay
There is a common problem across smartphone platforms — your screen dims or shuts off when you sit and read something for an extended period of time. Smart Stay takes the front-facing camera and uses it to detect motion. As long as it can detect motion, your phone will not dim nor will it shut off. When you set your phone down, the countdown for how long it takes for the phone to dim or turn the screen off will be enabled. If you pick the phone up before the countdown is finished, the counter is reset and Smart Stay continues to keep the screen lit.
Despite having a 2100 mAh battery, keeping the front-facing camera on and detecting things while you are using it sounds like it would be incredibly costly in terms of battery life.
S Voice
In an attempt to compete more directly with Apple and their speech interpretation software, Siri, Samsung has released S Voice on the Galaxy S3. The demonstrations of the software so far give the impression that S Voice could give Siri a run for its money. Among many similar features like command and response systems for weather and news, S Voice also has the ability to wake the device when it is off. The default command, “Hello Galaxy” can be replaced or supplemented by up to four other wake commands. Additionally, some critical internal apps like the camera app will be accessible through the voice commands.
Samsung is pretty clearly gunning for Apple and Siri with S-Voice, but there’s no telling what will happen with Google’s Mjolnir voice system, which could also be seen as a Siri competitor.
In an attempt to compete more directly with Apple and their speech interpretation software, Siri, Samsung has released S Voice on the Galaxy S3. The demonstrations of the software so far give the impression that S Voice could give Siri a run for its money. Among many similar features like command and response systems for weather and news, S Voice also has the ability to wake the device when it is off. The default command, “Hello Galaxy” can be replaced or supplemented by up to four other wake commands. Additionally, some critical internal apps like the camera app will be accessible through the voice commands.
Samsung is pretty clearly gunning for Apple and Siri with S-Voice, but there’s no telling what will happen with Google’s Mjolnir voice system, which could also be seen as a Siri competitor.
Smart Alert
We’ve moved a long way from the notification light, but many people still want to be told when the phone is getting notifications without a sound. Smart alert takes the motion sensor in the phone and sends you a vibration notification if you have any notifications that you haven’t cleared yet. Samsung pitched this feature with some smart settings, telling a story about how your boss sends you a message as you are asleep and your phone recognizes that somehow this message from your boss is important. What is most likely happening here, if the phone picks and chooses what notifications to tell you about via Smart Alert, there is likely a white-list of sorts that allows you to set notification type for Smart Alert.
S Beam
NFC enables a phone to do a lot of really cool things, but the guys at Samsung wanted to expand upon that foundation for their own service. S Beam takes the communication ability within the Android Beam function and adds larger file transfers and connectivity with more kinds of devices. S Beam takes NFC and pairs it with WiFi Direct Connect, creating an ad-hoc WiFi network between the two devices for faster file sharing. Additionally, Samsung allows the same technology to be used with their AllShare software, so you can stream videos and music to compatible sources. The biggest issue that S Beam will face initially would be with the compatibility. As Samsung rolls out more devices that are S Beam compliant, the service will become useful to anyone with multiple Samsung devices.
Samsung is clearly entrenching themselves deep into Android with this release, staking their claim on their own fork of Android. The features being implemented here will be unique to Samsung, and will further encourage users to stick with Samsung with all devices moving forward. There are still plenty of questions in regards to how well any of these features work, or how useful they will be in day to day usage, but from this little peek we have been given so far, it looks as though Samsung has created some serious new features.
We’ve moved a long way from the notification light, but many people still want to be told when the phone is getting notifications without a sound. Smart alert takes the motion sensor in the phone and sends you a vibration notification if you have any notifications that you haven’t cleared yet. Samsung pitched this feature with some smart settings, telling a story about how your boss sends you a message as you are asleep and your phone recognizes that somehow this message from your boss is important. What is most likely happening here, if the phone picks and chooses what notifications to tell you about via Smart Alert, there is likely a white-list of sorts that allows you to set notification type for Smart Alert.
S Beam
NFC enables a phone to do a lot of really cool things, but the guys at Samsung wanted to expand upon that foundation for their own service. S Beam takes the communication ability within the Android Beam function and adds larger file transfers and connectivity with more kinds of devices. S Beam takes NFC and pairs it with WiFi Direct Connect, creating an ad-hoc WiFi network between the two devices for faster file sharing. Additionally, Samsung allows the same technology to be used with their AllShare software, so you can stream videos and music to compatible sources. The biggest issue that S Beam will face initially would be with the compatibility. As Samsung rolls out more devices that are S Beam compliant, the service will become useful to anyone with multiple Samsung devices.
Samsung is clearly entrenching themselves deep into Android with this release, staking their claim on their own fork of Android. The features being implemented here will be unique to Samsung, and will further encourage users to stick with Samsung with all devices moving forward. There are still plenty of questions in regards to how well any of these features work, or how useful they will be in day to day usage, but from this little peek we have been given so far, it looks as though Samsung has created some serious new features.
After 14 years,Samsung became the first mobile phone seller in the world beating Nokia
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