This month saw the unveiling of the long awaited Samsung Galaxy S3, successor to the biggest selling Android phone of all time. With so much anticipation prior to the launch there was a lot of speculation about what the phone would have to offer. In the past, phone manufacturers attempted to compete with each other by one-upping their competitors on hardware specs. An increased processor speed here, a bump up in flash memory there. As the Galaxy S2 had an 8 megapixel camera the internet rumor-mongers took it for granted that the S3 would offer a 12 megapixel camera or more.
Increasing a camera’s megapixel count used to be an easy win for hyping up a new smartphone. As the Nokia PureView showed though, with its 41 megapixel camera, megapixel count is no longer something that will impress consumers. The Galaxy S3 possesses an 8 megapixel camera just as the S2 did, and from a cursory reading of the phone’s specifications this looks like one area that Samsung had not invested a lot of energy into.
But what can’t be communicated in a phone’s specifications are the extra features that make a camera easier to use or of a higher quality regardless of megapixels. HTC demonstrated this recently with the launch of the HTC One X, a phone which possesses the unique ability to take photos and record video simultaneously. This simple feature automatically makes it a superior camera to those with a similar megapixel count but without the ability to multitask.
One feature that Samsung did spend a lot of time and energy on during the Galaxy S3′s development was its new gesture controls. These are used for a variety of purposes, including answering phone calls and loading up apps. They can also be used to access the phone’s camera directly from the lock screen, by pressing the screen with one finger and then rotating the phone. Unlocking a phone and then scrolling through the app drawer to load the camera used to be a time consuming affair. This simple little gesture feature means that you can get straight to your phone’s camera when you encounter something that you quickly need to photograph.
Samsung has also worked at improving existing features such as face recognition. Face recognition has been included on most smartphone cameras for quite a few years but the technology has not really evolved much during that time. The Galaxy S3′s facial recognition system can follow someone as they move around a room, and if you tag somebody’s face to a contact it will remember who this individual is for future photographs.
This auto-tagging means that newly captured photographs can be uploaded straight to social networking sites like Facebook, pre-tagged. Social tagging also allows you to phone or message people directly from your photo gallery. By looking at a photo in your gallery, you can tap on an individual’s face to contact them through various channels.
When trying to photograph a scene where people are not posing statically it can be quite difficult to capture the image you were hoping for. The S3 includes a burst mode, taking 8 photos in rapid succession, so you can pick out the best photos to keep. Newly taken photos can easily be shared with other phones via the NFC powered S-Beam feature too.
Rather than just focussing on increasing hardware specifications Samsung has invested the time in adding in truly useful features with its new flagship. The camera is just one area where this can felt – lots of great features have been added for entertainment, interaction and sharing too. The phone is already available to pre-order in the UK, and will be released globally at the end of May. The camera is just one feature that will guarantee this will become one of the most popular phones of the year.
Guest post by Simon Drew.
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