You cannot deny that the Samsung Galaxy S3 is one high end smartphone that has done extremely well in the markets where it has appeared in, and there is the proverb which goes like this – imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The Nova N3 pays homage to the Galaxy S3 by looking more or less exactly like it, although it costs just a fraction of the price. Spotted on a Malaysian Facebook page, it retails for a mere RM599 (that would be $200 tops after conversion) for an unlocked device, accompanied by a free case as well as a screen protector. Heck, even the model number of the Nova N3 itself is misleading, carrying the i9300 number while the Galaxy S3 also shares that model number – at least for its international model.
Other hardware specifications of the Nova N3 (i9300) include a 4.7” touchscreen WVGA resolution display, sporting the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system while running on a clearly inferior 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor. The back carries an 8-megapixel camera, with a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera. You will not find LTE connectivity here, as it maxes out at just 3G. Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi and USB 2.0 connectivity rounds off the list of features in terms of connectivity.
Clearly, this is a far inferior model, carrying just 512MB RAM instead of the minimum 1GB RAM that the Galaxy S3 carries (with variants of 2GB RAM also available). Do bear in mind that the Nova N3 also lacks NFC connectivity, and you will not be able to take advantage of other cool Samsung features such as Beam.