As expected, Samsung today announced its new Galaxy S III Mini smartphone at an event in Frankfurt, Germany. The new version of the device has a 4-inch screen, scaled-down hardware, and lacks 4G LTE capabilities.

The 4-inch Super AMOLED screen on the Galaxy S III is the same size as the recently released iPhone 5 – certainly not a coincidence. Inside, the smartphone has a 1GHZ dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and NFC support. The rear camera is 5MP and the front camera is VGA. The device will come in either 8GB or 16GB versions and supports 3G wireless, though, as mentioned before, not 4G LTE.

“The GALAXY S III introduced a new concept of smartphone that has proven hugely popular around the world,” said JK Shin, head of IT & Mobile Communications at Samsung. “We’re now delighted to bring its revolutionary design, intuitive usability and intelligence to the GALAXY S III mini in a more compact form. We continue to make every effort to provide extraordinary mobile experiences to meet a wide variety of user needs.”

The Galaxy S III Mini does come with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean already installed (though with Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface and the company’s proprietary software, such as S-Voice, pre-installed), so customer’s won’t have to wait for an upgrade the way owners of the original Galaxy S III have had to.