Samsung unveils Galaxy S III to counter Apple iPhone

Touted as the biggest competitor to the iPhone, Samsung Galaxy S III will go on sale in Europe on May 29 and in the US this summer. The Korean company that showed off the phone on Thursday at an event in London said the phone will go on sale in 145 countries with 296 phone companies. This would make it the company's biggest launch so far.



What are its features
The latest offering by Samsung Electronics Co's Galaxy S III  will have a high-definition touch screen that's nearly twice the size of the iPhone, while being thinner and lighter than Apple's phone.

Like previous Galaxy phones, the S III will run Google Inc.'s Android software. The processor, or "brains" of the device, will be upgraded to include four computing cores. The iPhone and most other high-end phones are "dual-core," but there are some quad-core devices on sale already.

The added computing power will be put to use in the S III's expanded voice-command features. When the phone screen is off, owners will be able to "wake" it up by saying "Hi, Galaxy." They can then give further spoken commands. When Apple launched the iPhone 4S last year, it also made advances in voice recognition a central selling point.

The Galaxy series debuted in 2010. The screen size has increased with each version: The Galaxy S had a screen that measured 4 inches diagonally. It was followed by the S II, at 4.3 inches.

The S III screen has a 4.8-inch screen. Meanwhile, the iPhone screen has stayed the same size, at 3.5 inches, but the recent models pack more pixels into the screen, for a sharper display.

Samsung will sell a pad that charges a phone placed on it, with no need to connect a cable. Palm Inc.'s last smartphone had a similar feature when released three years ago, but it never became popular.

In the US, Japan and Korea, the phone will use fourth-generation, or 4G, networks for faster data downloads. Samsung didn't say which carriers would sell it, but the previous Galaxy model was sold by all four national US wireless carriers: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.

Samsung doesn't release phone shipment figures, but most analysts believe its smartphones outsold Apple and its 35.1 million iPhones in the January-to-March period. Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley believes Apple and Samsung together accounted for virtually all the profits in the phone industry in the first three months of 2012, with three-quarters going to Apple by virtue of its singular focus on the high-priced iPhone.

Samsung and Apple have a complicated relationship. They're rivals in the smartphone and tablet-computer markets and fight each other in court over patents. But Samsung is one of Apple's largest suppliers of chips and displays, and Apple is one of Samsung's largest clients.

With Asoociated Press inputs