Samsung Galaxy S III hits the US

The latest and greatest Android device has hit the US, a little less than a month after it reached Europe. The Samsung Galaxy S III is now available for purchase through T-Mobile. Other carriers will start selling the device within the next few weeks.

Samsung Galaxy S III - Marble White

The S III is an Android smartphone running the latest version of the mobile operating system, Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich. It features a large 4.8 inch HD Super AMOLED touchscreen, an 8 megapixel rear-facing camera, a 1.9 megapixel front-facing camera, 16 gigabytes of internal memory, 4G LTE service, and a quad-core CPU.

Samsung has also built in some interesting features, like Smart Stay. Smart Stay won't allow the screen to dim if you are still looking at it. Another useful feature is called Direct Call. This means that if a user is sending someone a text message and decides to call the person instead, they can just raise the phone to their ear, and the Phone will automatically make a phone call to the number that they were texting. The Smart Alert feature sends a user a vibrating nudge if they've missed any calls or messages while they were away from their phone. Social Tag automatically shows your friends social information when you look at a picture of them. And finally, S Beam allows users to tap two Galaxy S IIIs together to share data, including pictures, videos, and music.

Samsung also includes a voice-control feature in the S III, called S Voice. This feature is similar to the iPhone's Siri, as it allows users to set alarms, send messages, answer phone calls, and so on. Although S Voice has longer response times than Siri, it does seem to be more accurate.

Samsung Galaxy S III - Pebble Blue

The device itself has a sleek looking design, one that Samsung says was "inspired by nature". The S III is available in two colors, marble white and pebble blue, although T-Mobile is only offering the former at the moment. The screen offers extremely bright and vivid images, with its Super AMOLED technology. The device's 4G LTE service brings fast broadband speeds. T-Mobile currently does not offer LTE, but buying the device from AT&T or Verizon will get you LTE speeds.

You can purchase the Samsung Galaxy S III from T-Mobile for $279.99 here, or pre-order it from AT&T or Verizon for $199.99.

Samsung's ChatON arrives in the AppStore.

Samsung's SMS-free text messaging app, called ChatON, has finally hit the Apple AppStore, making it available on Android, Bada, and iOS. Blackberry, Windows Phone, and web support is still to come. Check out the app on the AppStore here, visit the website here, and read about what it does below.

Samsung is getting into the market that Apple, the maker of the iPhone, RIM, the maker of the BlackBerry, and Facebook are already in. Samsung, the maker of many popular mobile phones, "smart" and otherwise, introduced it's ChatON instant messaging service.

The ChatON service will allow users to send short messages to each other for free, including texts, photos, contacts, and calendar. The service will be available at first on Samsung devices running their "semi-smart" mobile operating system, called Bada.

A Samsung
device running Bada.

The service will later come as an app on Android and iOS devices. While the users of the Bada version will get the basic capabilities mentioned above, the users of the Android and iOS app will get some more advanced features, such as commenting on their friends profile pages, create special "animation messages", and keep track of how often they instant message.

Ho So Lee, Head of Media Solution Center at Samsung Electronics, said in a statement, "With ChatON, Samsung has vastly simplified mobile communication by allowing users to connect to our upcoming feature phones and all major smartphones in the market. Users around the world can now enjoy easier and richer interactivity with whoever they want, in the format they want."

While the ChatON service seems like a pretty good idea, like I mentioned at the beginning of the post, Samsung is competing with some pretty big contenders. RIM's BlackBerry Messenger was recently revamped to become more "social", Apple has a similar service coming out soon on all iOS devices, called iMessage, and of course Facebook, with more than 750 million users, recently launched it's Facebook Messenger app for iOS, so Samsung's app will have to be pretty good to compete.

Samsung's ChatON service will make it's official debut later this week at Berlin's IFA Conference, and will be available in over 120 countries with 62 languages.

So, the ChatON service has a lot to compete with, but it's one of the only services available on more than one platform, with it's Bada, iOS, and Android apps. Overall, it seems like a great service, and I wish it luck in succeeding in the large world of IM services.

 Check out the original article here.

Boost Mobile Leaks their own Phone: Samsung Galaxy Prevail

     Boost Mobile is a wireless carrier that provides contract-free wireless service for devices such as cell phones. There are a few Boost-like services around, including Cricket Wireless, Virgin Wireless, and MetroPCS. All of these companies have been rushing to get smartphones, because most of the phones were going to the big guys like AT&T or Verizon.
     Boost offers one BlackBerry phone and one two Android phones, one of which they just added today.
     Boost was supposed to hold a big announcement later today that would introduce it's latest phone. It seams they may have leaked the details early, as information about the new Samsung Galaxy Prevail appeared on the Boost website. Samsung makes pretty much one Galaxy phone which they give to all of the carriers with different names, for example Verizon calls their Galaxy phone the Samsung Fascinate.
     The Samsung Galaxy Prevail will be available for online purchase shortly, and will cost $179.99. Boost offers monthly plans for $50 per month, or a daily plan for $2 per month. Both plans come with unlimited talk, text, web, email, and IM. Boost also has an interesting program with it's $50 plan called Shrinkage. Shrinkage lowers your bill more and more the longer you stay with Boost. For example, if you pay on time every month for 18 months, your bill would only be $35 per month instead of $50.
     At $179.99, this is not the cheapest Android phone on the Market, but it is close. One of the major benefits of the Prevail and Boost Mobile is the lack of an annoying two year contract. Unlike Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, or Sprint, you have no responsibility to keep on paying the $50 per month for two years.