It's official: Samsung I9003 Galaxy SL packs Super Clear LCD screen

From rumor to official in no time - the Super Clear LCD packing Samsung I9003 will be called Galaxy SL. It turns out that the display isn't the only change, there are some changes under the hood as well.

The Samsung I9003 Galaxy SL has a 4" WVGA Super Clear LCD display instead of a SuperAMOLED unit (hopefully, the new name will prevent confusion).

Anyway, the I9003 Galaxy SL will come with Android 2.2 Froyo out of the box and the innards are very, very similar to the I9000 - except the CPU, which is a 1GHz TI OMAP 3630 instead of a Hummingbird CPU. Oh, and the internal memory is 16GB, there's no 8GB version. We can also report that the user available RAM has gone some 138MB up from the original Galaxy S.

Samsung I9003 Galaxy SL official photos

The I9003 is a bit longer and thicker than its I9000 sibling - it measures 123.7 x 64.2 x 10.59 mm (vs. 9.9mm thickness) and weighs 131g (12g more). On the upside, the Samsung Galaxy SL comes with a bigger battery (1650mAh).

The extra 150mAh do result in a talk time improvement - talk time is 15 hours in 2G (7.5 hours in 3G) - while standby has taken a hit and is now at 610 hours for 2G and 550 hours in 3G.

You're probably curious how all these changes have affected the "handling" of the Samsung I9003 Galaxy SL. We'll you'll just have to read our detailed Galaxy SL review for that.

Here are some live photos of the Samsung Galaxy SL:

Samsung I9000 Galaxy S (left) compared to Samsung I9003 Galaxy SL (middle) and LG Optimus 2X (right)

Right now, the Samsung I9003 Galaxy SL is listed only on Samsung's Middle East and Asia site. There's still no official press release, saying on which markets the I9003 will replace the I9000.

Samsung I9000 Galaxy S (bottom) compared to Samsung I9003 Galaxy SL (top)

Mind you, the I9003 Galaxy SL is not the Galaxy S successor - that one should be announced on the 13th February. The I9003 SL is merely a way to make sure there will be AMOLED panels for the Galaxy S2 without the need to discontinue the original Galaxy S altogether.

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