Hands-on with 'S Beam' on the Samsung Galaxy S III

Samsung announced a slew of new features on the Galaxy S III at yesterday's Unpacked event in London, and one of the most interesting was "S Beam", a new file transfer capability based around NFC and Wifi Direct. Similar to ICS's Android Beam feature, you start by finding a file, photo or video in one of the built-in applications, then tap the screen to start the transfer. The phones are then instantly paired, and a Wifi Direct connection is established between them to handle all the heavy lifting. Because the Galaxy S III supports Wifi channel bonding, files can be transferred at up to 300Mbps, though that's dependent on how much interference there is in the area.

As you'll see in our video demo, it seems to work pretty well. See for yourself after the break.

Alex Dobie
Executive Editor

Alex was with Android Central for over a decade, producing written and video content for the site, and served as global Executive Editor from 2016 to 2022.