Samsung’s Galaxy S III Mini blows away iPhone 3GS, yes, the 3GS

Samsung formally introduced the Galaxy S III Mini on Thursday, a smaller version of its highly successful flagship phone to compete with the iPhone 5.

But the only iPhone it may be capable of beating is the 3GS from 2009.

The Mini features a 4-inch screen and externally, it resembles its 4.8-inch counterpart, which has been a huge success worldwide. But besides that and its name, there is not much else that is impressive about the new Samsung phone.

One of the main features that’s disappointing is the Mini’s screen. It has an 800-by-480-pixel screen resolution. That’s dramatically less than the Galaxy S III’s and it’s much less than the iPhone 5’s 4-inch screen, which has a resolution of 1,136 by 640 pixels.

Another big disappointment with the Mini is its connectivity. According to Gizmodo, the phone is unable to connect to 4G networks. Rather, the device is limited to 3G, which nowadays is unacceptable for any phone trying to be a major player.

A smaller issue is its rear camera is limited to 5 megapixels, making it inferior to the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S III’s 8-megapixel cameras. However, it would beat out the iPhone 3GS’ 3-megapixel camera.

But it’s not all bad for the Mini.

It does include Near-Field Communication technology, or NFC, and it runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system.

Besides that, the Mini uses a 1 Ghz dual-core processor and will be available in 8 GB and 16 GB versions, although that can be expanded through a microSD card.

Samsung has yet to announce a release date or pricing, but after hearing about its specs, many people may no longer care, unless of course it costs a lot less than the Galaxy S III.

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