To get ahead of a 45-day phone sale suspension, Korean carriers are selling the GS5 before its April 11 launch.
Samsung's new Galaxy S5 smartphone appears to have slipped through the manufacturer's fingers, going on sale in South Korea two weeks ahead of schedule.
Set for release on April 11, the flagship handset is now available in the Asian country via SK Telecom Co and two other carriers that are trying to rack up sales before they are temporarily banned from selling devices in the region.
Samsung did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment. But a spokesman told Bloomberg that the phone maker is "very puzzled."
"SK Telecom strongly asked for an earlier release of the product but we delivered our stance that the global release date of April 11 remains unchanged," the company said.
Korean carriers, however, are facing a 45-day ban on selling phones after they attempted to illegally subsidize handsets. That ban falls in the midst of Samsung's Galaxy S5 rollout, so the carriers are likely trying to sell as many smartphone as they can before the ban goes into effect on April 5.
SK Telecom, the country's largest carrier, started selling the GS5 today for 866,800 won ($809) in its 3,000 retail stores and online, Bloomberg said. Also, KT and LG Uplus customers can pick up the smartphone under certain conditions.
SK Telecom also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the U.S., AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint are accepting Galaxy S5 pre-orders, though it is also coming to Verizon, MetroPCS, and U.S. Cellular.
The next-gen 5.1-inch, 1,920-by-1,080 Super AMOLED device doesn't differ much in physical appearance from its S4 predecessor, but it now comes with a fingerprint scanner and heart-rate monitor, as well as a handful of new networking technologies. Also, a 16-megapixel main camera promises 0.3-second autofocus and live HDR preview.
For more, see PCMag's Hands On With the Samsung Galaxy S5, as well as The Top 10 Questions about the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Samsung Galaxy S5 vs. Apple iPhone 5s: Spec Showdown.
Also check out PCMag Live in the video below, which discusses the early launch of Samsung's GS5.
via Technology - Google News http://ift.tt/1heVK8W
Put the internet to work for you.
0 comments:
Post a Comment