Samsung officially launches Galaxy S III Mini – full specs and details here

As expected, Samsung has officially announced Galaxy S III Mini, a mid-range Android handset that bears little resemblance to the high-flying and award-winning flagship Galaxy S3 smartphone.

Instead, Samsung are  releasing a decidedly mid-market kind of smartphone, packing a 4-inch Super AMOLED display with a 800 x 480 display,  dual-core 1GHz processor and modest 5MP camera.

There’s no LTE onboard but it does come with the latest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS.

Interestingly, The Guardian’s increasingly Apple-besotted reviewer, Charles Arthur, insisted that the Mini’s 4-inch screen was part of a strategy to “compete with Apple’s iPhone5.”

Despite the fact that Samsung were releasing phones with 4-inch screens years ago, the handset’s low-end specs would make this a very strange rival – particularly when the company already has the massively successful Galaxy S2 selling like hotcakes.

We’re still waiting for pricing, but we expect it’ll be as mid range as the phone itself.

Scroll on for the press release and full specs:

Samsung Introduces GALAXY S III mini, a Compact yet Powerful Smartphone

October 11, 2012

GALAXY S III’s nature-inspired design and intuitive ease-of-use
in one stylish, compact smartphone

SEOUL, Korea – October 11, 2012 – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies, today unveiled the GALAXY S III mini, a compact version of the flagship smartphone GALAXY S III. The GALAXY S III mini brings the high performance, intuitive ease-of-use and nature-inspired design of the GALAXY S III to an elegant, compact smartphone with a 4.0-inch screen. It can be an optimal choice for consumers who are looking for more practical smartphones.

“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 GALAXY S III mini is powered by Android™ 4.1 (Jelly Bean), the latest version of the world’s most popular smartphone operating system. Jelly Bean has fast, fluid and smooth graphics along with a new Google Search™ experience featuring Google Now™, which brings you just the right information, before you even ask.

Stylish and compact, the GALAXY S III mini shares the GALAXY S III’s breakthrough design and simple elegance. Its ultra-minimal curved frame delivers a rich natural feel, which is also reflected on its nature-inspired home screen, wallpapers and ringtones. Its beautiful 4.0-inch Super AMOLED display offers a generous viewing experience that lets you view multimedia and Web content in brilliant color and clarity. Its compact size gives users a comfortable grip and allows a convenient one-hand operation.

The GALAXY S III mini is packed with intelligent technology designed to make interacting with the phone incredibly natural and intuitive. S Voice, Samsung’s advanced natural language recognition software, lets you use your voice to unlock the phone with simple customized commands, or to play your favorite songs, turn the volume up or down, organize your schedule, or automatically launch the camera and start taking photos.

The GALAXY S III mini also understands your gestures to make using your phone easier and more natural: With Smart Stay, the phone’s camera tracks your eyes and keeps the screen lit as long as you are looking at it. When reading a text message from a friend, Direct Call enables you to automatically dial a call simply by lifting the phone to your ear; and Smart Alert conveniently alerts you to missed calls or messages as soon as you pick up your phone.

Content sharing is easy and fast on the GALAXY S III mini: Its S Beam feature lets you share a 10MB music file in just two seconds by simply tapping on another S Beam-enabled device including GALAXY S III or GALAXY Note II, even without a Wi-Fi or cellular signal. The ‘Buddy photo share’ function also allows photos to be easily and simultaneously shared with all your friends pictured in an image directly from the camera or the photo gallery.