14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung Galaxy S III Neo quietly made its debut in Europe after the smartphone was released in India earlier this year. The mid-range handset has been recently listed on Samsung Germany’s official website, though we still don't have any details regarding its price.
However, those expecting this one to come cheap will be disappointed as Samsung India priced the Galaxy S III Neo at no less than Rs 25,400 outright, which is about $430 or €315. The smartphone is likely to go on sale soon and it will be available in two color options, black and white.
The main strong points of the Galaxy S III Neo seem to be the fact that it comes with a pretty decent quad-core processor and it ships with Android 4.4.2 KitKat operating system out of the box.
Sadly, unlike the variant that was launched a few months ago in India with dual-SIM capability, the European version is only single SIM. Although it's unfortunate that dual-SIM phones are still hard to come by in Europe, it's no surprise that Samsung has released a single-SIM version in this region.
As mentioned earlier, Samsung Galaxy S III Neo comes with a quad-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz, which seems to be the same as the standard Galaxy S III model. This is actually better than the 1.2GHz CPU that comes embedded in the Indian version of Galaxy S III Neo.
The Galaxy S III Neo is offered by Samsung as a replacement for the Galaxy S III, which will not be upgraded to Android 4.4.2 KitKat due to some issues with TouchWiz UI.
The smartphone comes with almost the same specs as the standard version of Galaxy S III, but adds 3G into the mix and, obviously, the new Android 4.4.2 KitKat operating system.
Samsung Galaxy S III Neo sports a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD (720p) capacitive touchscreen display that features Corning Gorilla Glass 2 coating for extra protection.
Another improvement over the original model is the fact that it comes with 1.5GB of RAM instead of just 1GB RAM. The smartphone is packed with 16GB of internal memory, which can be further expanded up to 64GB via microSD memory card.
On the back, the Galaxy S III Neo comes with an 8-megapixel photo snapper with LED flash, autofocus and full HD (1080p) video recording, while in the front, there's a secondary 1.9-megapixel camera for video calls.
It also comes with the usual connectivity options like 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC (Near Field Communication), microUSB and GPS with A-GPS support.