Samsung Galaxy S III mini review

Samsung made a bold move when it announced the Galaxy S III mini. Here was an Android phone with the potential to take the iPhone 5 head-on. While the original Galaxy S III is clearly the flagship, its 4.8-inch display means it's literally too much for some people to handle. By matching Apple's screen size inch for inch, it could have been pitched as a device aimed at winning over some iOS fence-sitters. However, when you look at the specifications: a dual-core 1GHz processor, WVGA (800 x 480) display and a 5-megapixel camera, it's clear that Samsung had other ideas, opting to fish for a more mid-range customer instead.

Fast forward to the present, and it's no longer a matter of intellectual debate as to what the mini is all about: the phone is here, and on sale in much of Europe for £299 / €379. So hubris, brand appeal and pundit talk aside, is this the real-deal Galaxy S III, just for smaller hands? Or is it a budget phone simply wearing its elder sibling's tuxedo to the ball? We spent some time getting to know the phone in an attempt to find out.

If you happen to own a Galaxy S III, it might be useful to get it out of your pocket or handbag and rest it on some surface beside you -- now, if that's possible. For a lot of what we are about to describe will otherwise seem eerily familiar. But, rather than labor the GS3 comparisons right from the off, we'll give the Galaxy S III mini the individual attention it's entitled to, and then we'll see how (and maybe why) it differs.

Previous Galaxy phones have typically been pretty subdued when it comes to the design flair. They've been relatively nondescript oblongs of plastic, furnished with the requisite details to let you, the user, make calls, browse the web and otherwise get on with your mobile life. The third iteration of the Galaxy S line was the first major departure from this comfortable, familiar arrangement, but one that was welcome. This same design language -- the curved top and bottom, the metal-look accents, et cetera -- is in full effect here.

All told, the Galaxy S III mini is a handsome enough device. Our review model was the marble white version (pebble blue is also available), which looks bright and modern in person. The smooth lines along the top and bottom make the whole thing feel like one continuous shape, almost circle-like, which again makes it feel much more like part of Samsung's 2012 lineup than, say, the Galaxy Beam. Dimensions-wise, it's 2.4 inches wide by 4.7 inches tall, and just a touch over a third of an inch deep. A large device -- unsurprisingly -- this is not. Those measurements are what frame this phone's defining feature -- a 4-inch Super AMOLED PenTile display, which we'll talk about in more detail later on.

Above this screen is the grille for the earpiece, the front-facing (VGA) camera and a couple of sensors. Below it, the familiar Samsung "home" button, as well as two capacitive buttons: one for "menu," the other for back. Neither are visible until the screen is activated, at which point their backlighting will bring them to your attention. The rest of the device's personality comes from the metallic detail around the home button, and around the outermost part of the bezel.