There's no info on the phone's pricing and availability yet

Oct 12, 2012 04:21 GMT  ·  By

As expected, Samsung officially announced the upcoming availability of the Galaxy S III Mini smartphone.

Although the South Korean company did not unveil the phone's pricing and release date, we expect the device to go on sale this fall for around 400 EUR (515 USD).

Unlike the original Galaxy S III model, the Mini version comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system out of the box.

However, it sports a much smaller 4.0-inch WVGA Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display that supports 480 x 800 pixels resolution, and a less-powerful 1 GHz dual-core NovaThor U8420 processor.

On the back, the phone packs a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash and HD (720p) video recording, while in the front there's a secondary VGA camera for video calls.

When it comes to connectivity, Samsung Galaxy S III Mini offers both HSDPA (14.4Mbps) and HSUPA (5.76Mbps), along with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and NFC (Near Field Communication).

Depending on the region and model, the Galaxy S III Mini can pack 8GB or 16GB of internal memory, which can be further expanded up to 32GB via microSD memory card.

Software-wise, the handset is stuffed with everything that Galaxy S III has to offer as well, so expect the Mini to bring S Beam, S Voice, Direct Call, Smart Alert as well as Buddy photo share.

Obviously, users will also have access to more than 600,000 apps and games via Google Play store. The full Google suite of services is included as well: Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Latitude, Google Now, Google Play Movies, Google Plus, YouTube, Google Talk and many more.

The GALAXY S III introduced a new concept of smartphone that has proven hugely popular around the world. We’re now delighted to bring its revolutionary design, intuitive usability and intelligence to the GALAXY S III mini in a more compact form. We continue to make every effort to provide extraordinary mobile experiences to meet a wide variety of user needs,” said JK Shin, president and head of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics.