Samsung launches Galaxy SIII phone in Kenya

Samsung has launched in Kenya its latest smart phone in the Galaxy series, SIII, that has ground-breaking features such as voice command, facial and movement recognition.

Kenya becomes the second African country to have the Galaxy S III in the retail market after South Africa where it was launched two weeks ago.

“The Galaxy S III enables the most seamless and human-centric mobile experience,” said Mr Robert Ngeru, the business leader at Samsung Electronics East Africa.

Powered by the Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of the Android operating system and a quad-core 1.4 Ghz processor, the gadget will retail at Sh59,999 ($714) in the local market.

Samsung is taking on the iPhone head on in a bid to gain a bigger share of the high-end smart phone market. The S III phone is an improvement of the S II launched in May 2011 and locally retails at Sh46,999 ($559).

The S III smart phone’s camera offers the ‘best shot’ function where it automatically captures a series of eight shots and chooses the best image for you.

The ‘S-Voice’ feature allows users to give voice commands such as call acceptance, photo taking and the direct call features activated by motion and will automatically make a call if the caller’s contacts or message details are on the screen and the caller moves the phone towards the ear.

The phone is also set to revolutionise the mobile money market as it comes with the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology which allows users to make contactless payments using the hand set as a mobile wallet.

Interestingly, the ‘smart stay’ utility allows the phone display to remain active when the user’s eyes are directed on the screen and goes into sleep mode when the user moves the eyes away from the screen or closes the eyes.