Samsung never made any HTC-style claims about paring down its smartphone offerings, and it’s being made abundantly clear that the company isn’t ready to put the phone design scattergun back in the cabinet just yet. The Galaxy S3 Mini just made its debut recently, bringing a scaled-down Galaxy S3 experience to mid-range buyers, and now there’s a second GS3 remix on its way to carriers: the Galaxy Premier.
The Premier doesn’t utilize a Samsung Exynos 4412 or even a Qualcomm MSM8960 like the GS3 models it’s clearly inspired by. Instead, Samsung has opted for a dual-core Texas Instruments OMAP 4470 chip clocked at 1.5GHz. So while the Galaxy Premier may sound like a watered-down GS3, like a well-mixed scotch that water doesn’t make it hard to swallow. This is the same chip that’s powering Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD — the one that Jeff Bezos claimed can whoop up on the Tegra 3.
The GS3′s 4.8-inch display has been reduced to 4.65 inches, though the 1280 x 720 remains intact (leading to an imperceptible bump in ppi). Internal storage and RAM have been halved, dropping down to 8 and 16GB and 1GB respectively on the Premier. It’s still sporting the 1.9MP front and 8MP rear cameras seen on the GS3, and it still features 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi direct support, Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC. The battery holds steady at 2100mAh, and both HSPA and LTE radios come along for the ride — though the latter will only be found in certain regions.
Price still remains a question. While the Galaxy Premier will sell for 5,555 hryvnias in the Ukraine, that would translate to an off-contract price of around $680 in the US. That’s $130 more than AT&T is currently selling the Snapdragon version for, and it’s hard to imagine a mostly downward move in terms of specs commanding a steeper premium on store shelves. If the processor is the only actual upgrade here and Amazon can sell the Kindle Fire HD for $199 with the same chip, it seems probable that the Galaxy Premier would probably come in around $500 with no strings attached if it makes its way stateside.
No comments:
Post a Comment