Thursday, 27 March 2014

Samsung launches S5 in India for R51K-plus, sans 4G - Indian Express

Summary

The Indian version of Galaxy S5 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 and hence would not be a 4G phone.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is finally here. But you might not be happy about the fact that the phone costs at least Rs 51,000. It could be as high as Rs 53,000.

The other small catch is the fact that the phone launched in India is not powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 and hence would not be a 4G phone. The version being launched in India is powered by an octo-core processor combo (quad 1.9 GHz + Quad 1.3 GHz) which seems to be similar to the Exynos 5 processors on the latest Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Note Pro 12.2-inch tablet.

As reported by indianexpress.com earlier, the company also launched the entire new Gear range along with the Galaxy S5. The Gear 2 is priced at Rs 21,900, while the Gear 2 Neo and Gear Fit are more affordable with a Rs 15,900 price tag. It has also opened up these devices to almost the entire Galaxy range, of which there are 35 million users in India. Earlier, the Gear devices synced only with a handful of top-end Galaxy phones.

However, they still don't work beyond Galaxy ecosystem and Vineet Taneja, the country head for India, said this has been done deliberately to draw people towards the Galaxy range.

While the pricing might appear steep for a lot of people, the fact is that high prices have not really deterred people from buying flagship phones. A case in point is the success of iPhone 5s despite its price tag. Plus, Samsung is certain that people who buy these phones will do so with the help of EMI schemes.

The rest of the specs of the Galaxy S5 are similar to what was announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February. The change in processor has been necessitated by the fact that there is still no nationwide 4G service in India. HTC, which earlier this week announced the HTC One M8 powered by the same processor as the S5, has decided to launch only the 4G version in India.