Technology: May 4, 2012

Samsung has a new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III is packed with new features. Most of them are software, not hardware, Samsung has worked long and hard to improve Google's Android OS, and give a phone buyers a reason to buy their products over HTC's and Apple. Here are 10 features Samsung announced yesterday that it could make a difference.

10. Pop-Up PlayGimmicky, but cool, Pop-Up Play shows what you can do with a quad-core processor in a phone. If you look at the video and want to do something else, you can turn the video on a thumbnail to float - still playing! - Over the browser. This is a step to really be able to run two apps at once, something for which the large 4.8-inch screen is almost begging.

9. Smart StayDo not you hate it when you read something in your phone, and then the screen backlight times out and goes black? This happens to me all the time when I try to figure out games from drowning. You can change the timeout length, but this is a smart solution: it uses a sensor to check if your head is in front of the phone, and keep the lights on if you are looking for in the device.

8. Social Tagging / Buddy ShareI'm not 100 percent sure how it works, but Samsung says uses face recognition to match people in your photos with your contacts. Then you can flip through the pictures to their social-networking status, or tap on their faces to email them the photos. It is quite amazing.

7. AllShare PlayRelatively few people connect their phones to their televisions for the two choices are HDMI / MHL adapters (complicated and short) and DLNA networking (incomprehensible.) Samsung's AllShare Play dongle, such as HTC's Media Link HD, hooks up to your TV and let your telephone beam video over wireless with no confusing user interface.

6. Best PhotoIt looks like the Galaxy S III takes all the pictures in burst mode. When you take a picture, you really take eight, and you can then choose the best one of the crowd. That would eliminate people blinking.

5. S BeamCombining NFC and Wi-Fi Direct, you can transfer files - even large ones - between two Galaxy S IIIs by tapping them together. Now, would not it be great if this was an open standard, and each phone with both technologies to do it?

4. Sharp Bluetooth StereoThe APT-X codec in the Galaxy S III at the end takes the blurry muddiness of Bluetooth stereo, promising a much more acute wireless sound. Now that the S III, HTC One phones, and Motorola Droid Razr all the apt-X, it is time to see some great apt-X wireless headphones hitting the market.

3. S VoiceSamsung's answer to Apple's Siri can do web searches, and run the phone itself functions. Samsung did not show how deep it goes or how smart it takes, but what little we have seen is encouraging.

2. Best Call QualitySmartphones are still mobile, right? The Audience es305 voice-processing chip in the Galaxy S III will make you sound clear on the other end of the call, canceling both noise people can hear you, and refining your voice as systems such as S Voice can better understand what you say.

1. Ice Cream SandwichIt is time for Android users to be able to move to the higher version of the OS. In our benchmarks, Ice Cream Sandwich gave a much better Web browsing speeds than Gingerbread, and new APIs let developers take better advantage of larger screens ilke the 4.8-inch panel on the Galaxy S III.

Of course, these are not all the new features of the Galaxy S III. With 10 slots on my list, I could not reach a "direct call" (to pick up the phone for SMSing to call the same person) or the mysterious S Pebble MP3 player, for example. For more on the Galaxy S III, check out our hands-on.

Friday, May 4, 2012

10 Coolest Features of the Samsung Galaxy S III

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