Samsung unveils Galaxy S III Mini

Samsung today unveiled the Galaxy S III Mini, the smaller and toned-down iteration of its current flagship smartphone, in Germany. The all-new device features the 'pebble' design language that the Galaxy S III and Note II have, but features a smaller 4-inch SuperAMOLED display.

The Galaxy S III Mini runs Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) with Nature UI and is powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor, which will be much slower than the 1.4GHz quad-core processor used in the S III. The phone will be available in 8GB and 1GB variants, which will support microSD card up to 32GB.

Rear camera in the S III Mini has been scaled down to 5MP, from the 8MP snapper that came with the S III. The battery has also been reduced from 2,100mAh in the S III to 1,500mAh in S III Mini. Connectivity options in the two devices remain the same, such as NFC, 4G, 3G, 2G, Bluetooth 4.0 and S Beam. The S III Mini also comes with S Voice, the digital voice assistant that Samsung developed in order to rival with Apple's Siri.

Though the S III Mini is being launched as an extension to the S III brand, its hardware is quite similar to that of the Galaxy S Advance. The only differences between the two devices are NFC, 4G, S Voice, S Beam, slight increment in RAM and Android 4.1 instead of Android 2.3.

There was no word on the pricing and availability of the Samsung Galaxy S III Mini globally as well as in India. However, India is one of the biggest markets for Samsung and we expect that the phone will soon be officially launched in the country.