Samsung announces SmartStay and S Voice features for the Galaxy S III

In addition to announcing its newest flagship, the Galaxy S III, along with some nifty photo-sharing features, Samsung has just revealed two more human-friendly features that aim to further differentiate the phone on the software side. These include SmartStay, which cleverly keeps the display from timing out by using the front-facing camera to detect when you're looking at the screen. Meanwhile, S Voice ushers in voice commands, and is the closest thing we've seen to a Siri competitor since Apple introduced that feature on the iPhone 4S. And we have to say, though Android users have long been reveling in voice-activated dialing and Google searches, the list of possible use cases here is quite impressive. In addition to initiating calls, you can wake the phone, request songs, capture photos and inquire about the weather. For now, Samsung says this feature will support eight languages, including, among others, Spanish, German, Korean and American / British English. Still, we wouldn't put it past Samsung to teach the GS III a few more languages once it gets that whole "launching in 145 countries" thing out of the way.

Samsung announces SmartStay and S Voice features for the Galaxy S III originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 May 2012 14:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.