Samsung’s new S3 Mini tarnishes the Galaxy brand

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Of all the companies that produce smartphones, Samsung has had a tendency to release more than any of them. With devices like the Galaxy Note 2 and the Galaxy S3 it felt like Samsung was slowing down a bit and focusing on powerful devices for specific markets as opposed to throwing a fistful of darts at a wall. The popularity of the Samsung Galaxy S3, and the GS2 before it, also created powerful brand recognition. Even during the release of the phone, Samsung announced the phone as “the new Galaxy.” With the underwhelming release of the Galaxy S3 Mini, Samsung seems to be trying very hard to take a mediocre phone and hype it up to be more than it is.

On the surface, the Galaxy S3 Mini sounds like it would be a solid phone. With Android 4.1 onboard and stuffed with all of Samsung’s enhancements, like S-Voice and Smart Stay, the phone sounds like it would be a great 4-inch device. It may sound silly that Samsung is describing a 4-inch handset as “compact” and “mini,” but that’s because the iPhone just “grew” to 4 inches and the Note 2 has a 5.5-inch display. And, after all, the Mini is just like the Galaxy S3, only smaller, right?

Samsung says the screen on the Galaxy S3 Mini offers a generous viewing experience that lets you view multimedia and web content in brilliant color and clarity. This 800×480 Super AMOLED display is two generations behind in Samsung’s screen technology, at a resolution that hasn’t been considered “generous” since Android 2.1. To accompany the significant decrease in screen quality, Samsung used a 5MP camera in the back and a VGA camera in the front, as opposed to the 8MP camera in the back and 1.9MP camera in the front of the Galaxy S3.

Galaxy S3 MiniThe Galaxy S3 Mini comes out 22 grams lighter than the LTE Samsung Galaxy S3, but it’s noticeably thicker… and lacks LTE. It’s not thicker because it has the same size battery though. In fact, the battery is down to 1500mAh from the 2100mAh found in the Galaxy S3 . It’s likely that the dual-core 1GHz processor in the Mini will use less power than the Snapdragon S4 LTE or the quad-core Exynos found in the international variant of the GS3, but even with the power decrease the phone isn’t expected to get the same battery life as its big brother.

Samsung has released plenty of phones since the the original Galaxy S that did not have the same branding as their flagship model. Those smartphones have never performed as well as the Galaxy line, but that usually had much more to do with the quality of the phone than the branding behind it. Samsung’s decision to label this device as a compact Galaxy S3 makes it seem much better than it really is.

There will always be a need for budget devices, that’s why every carrier offers phones that are free with a two-year contract. With this phone, Samsung is able to expand their portfolio of devices that support core Samsung features like S-Beam and Smart Alerts. Samsung could have easily accomplished the same goal by releasing the “Galaxy Mini”, but instead they drew a parallel to the most popular phone in their lineup and tarnished the branding of the Galaxy S line.