Samsung wants everyone to have a Galaxy smartphone. The company just confirmed that they will unveil a ‘mini’ version of the popular Galaxy S3 on Thursday.
JK Shin, the mobile chief for Samsung, said that his company will finally unveil a four-inch smartphone. Just last week, the tech giant sent out invitations for the launch event.
Shin didn’t divulge many more details, but he did admit, “There’s a lot of demand for a 4-inch screen device in Europe. Some may call it an entry-level device, but we call it ‘mini'”
One German website, called MobileGeeks, reports that the Galaxy S3 Mini will feature a screen resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, 5 megapixel camera in the back, 16GB flash memory, MicroXD slot, 1GHz dual-core STE U8420 chip, and the Jelly Bean (Android 4.1). At four inches, this phone should be a big iPhone 5 competitor
Whether the Galaxy S3 Mini can directly compete with Apple’s latest is something that remains to be seen. According to AppleInsider, the S3 Mini doesn’t have the specifications to match the sixth generation Apple smartphone.
Last summer, the Samsung Galaxy S3 sold 200 million handsets within the first 100 days. It also outsold the previous generation within five months. It would be surprising if the Galaxy S3 Mini failed to sell as well as the other Galaxy smartphones.
The Galaxy S3 is pretty hard to top, but I think there is a lot of potential for the S3 Mini, especially if they price it right.
The only concern Samsung should have right now is patent rights. Last month, the tech giant was forced to pay up $1 billion dollars in damages to Apple over a patent lawsuit, and it could easily happen again. Let’s just hope that Samsung will keep the past in mind when they finally introduce their new mini phone tomorrow.