The Tech Update

Samsung’s latest product, the Galaxy S 111 smartphone boasts some pretty incredible features; so impressive, in fact, (or at least so well marketed anyway) that it’s already the official smartphone of the 2012 Olympic Games.

One of the biggest focal points of the phone’s initial unveiling in London, was its unique ability to predict a user’s next move.  This feature, which is called Smart Stay, uses eye-tracking technology to wake the phone up and put it to sleep based on user movements.  The front-facing camera specifically, can detect when a user is looking at the device or not, and will react accordingly.

A similarly unique feature allows a Siri-esque program called S Voice to launch the 8-megapixel camera application, (which also plays host to an LED flash and 1.9MP front-facing camera) something that the iPhone 4s and other competitor phones can’t do.  The program also performs a whole host of other tasks via voice recognition software such as checking the weather, searching the web, adding appointments to the calendar app, and placing phone calls, much like the offerings of Siri for the iPhone.

Perhaps the most surprising feature of the phone though, comes in the form of facial recognition technology that can identify people in photos and link back to your friend’s social network pages like Facebook and Twitter.  One can also easily email or text photos to those identified people within their phone book with the stroke of just a few keys.  And yet still, there’s more.

The massive 4.8-inch screen makes for a good interface for the phone’s Pop Up Play feature, which is similar to the picture-in-picture, or PIP, features found on many televisions.  This allows users to watch videos while browsing, texting, or using other applications simultaneously on different parts of the screen.

In addition to all these new, unique features, some other hardware highlights include a 1280×720 display resolution, a 1.4GHz quad-core processor, and a built-in NFC chip for file sharing and mobile payments.

While the 3G version of the Galaxy S 111 will launch in May in Europe, and then across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East after, the U.S. will have to wait until later in the summer for the handsets.  Samsung has said that by then, the phones will run on 4G LTE networks as well, although pricing and carriers have not been identified yet.