Samsung Galaxy S5 Released Early In South Korea
Samsung Galaxy S5 was unveiled last month at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, but it won’t be available until the second month of April, as its release date is set for April 11 2014. However, it seems that South Korean carriers broke the release date and released the fifth Galaxy S smartphone in retail stores as of yesterday. South Korean carriers decided to break the original release date due to government restrictions.
Samsung officials are “very puzzled” by the decision of South Korean carriers to release the fifth Galaxy S in stores earlier; according to Samsung officials, Samsung did not agree with the move: “SK Telecom [South Korea’s largest carrier] strongly asked for an earlier release of the product but we delivered our stance that the global release date of April 11 remains unchanged“.
Three carriers: KT, LG U+ and SK Telecom (which is the largest carrier in South Korea) released the Samsung Galaxy S5 earlier than the planned date (which is April 11) in their retail stores due to government restrictions that render them unable to get new customers during the month of April. If the South Korean’s ruling sounds strange, the context behind it is that these restrictions were imposed on the three carriers after the South Korean government found that they were offering illegal subsidies. It must also be mentioned that these restrictions were imposed on the three carriers after Samsung set the worldwide release date for the fifth Galaxy S smartphone as April 11 2014.
As you would suspect, the carriers’ decision to release the Samsung Galaxy S5 early comes in fear that they would lose many customers if releasing next month, which would be bad for business. It would also be a bit ironic that the fifth Galaxy S smartphone would have a bad start in its home country. The sanctions imposed by the South Korean government (sanctions that prevent the carriers from signing up new customers) on SK Telecom begin next month on April 5 and end a month later on May 19th. SK Telecom has about a week until April 5th to attract new customers with the Samsung Galaxy S5. The other major carriers from South Korea, KT and LG U+ are already under the effects of the sanctions and they can only sale the fifth Galaxy S smartphone to customers not covered by the restrictions.
SK Telecom sells the Samsung Galaxy S5 off contract for 866,800 Korean won ( approximately $810). This price tag is lower than the one of the Samsung Galaxy S4 had when it was released a year ago. So why the lower price tag? It may have something to do with the fact that the Samsung Galaxy S4 did not meet sales expectations in South Korea (or the rest of the world for that matter). What are your thoughts regarding the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the fact that South Korean carriers decided to release Samsung’s new flagship earlier? As usual, use the dedicated section below to leave a comment.
About the Samsung Galaxy S5
The Samsung Galaxy S5 keeps the design of the fourth Galaxy S almost intact. The Samsung galaxy S5 features a Super AMOLED panel capable of a Full high Definition resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The fifth Samsung Galaxy S is powered by a 2.5 GHz quad core Snapdragon 801 System on Chip with 2 GB of RAM and an Adreno 330 GPU. It will also be released in a variant with an octo core Exynos 5422 System on Chip that will feature two CPUs (a 2.1 GHz quad core Cortex-A15 and a 1.5 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7), 2 GB of RAM and an ARM Mali T628MP6 GPU. It also features a removable Li-ion 2800 mAh battery that is larger than Galaxy S4’s 2600 mAh Li-ion battery and it also offers a low power mode that is enabled when battery life is low.
One of the new additions is a home button that, just as the iPhone 5S, integrates a fingerprint scanner. The swipe based fingerprint sensor is inspired by iPhone 5S? similar sensor, but unfortunately first impressions were not very good: due to the swipe based nature of the fingerprint sensor it is almost impossible to activate it when using the Galaxy S5 with a single hand. The fifth Galaxy S also integrates a heart rate monitor placed on the smartphone?s back, next to the camera?s flash. The heart rate monitor can be used from within the S Health app and after placing your finger on the sensor, it will grab your pulse in about ten seconds, with very good accuracy.
Just like the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, the fifth Galaxy S features an IP67 (Ingress Protection) rating, which makes it dust proof and water proof as it is ?totally protected against dust? and is ?protected against the effect of immersion between 15cm and 1m?. The Samsung Galaxy S5 also comes with Android 4.4.2 KitKat out of the box and Samsung?s own front end touch interface, TouchWiz, over it plus the usual S branded apps and features. All in all, it is a high end smartphone, worthy of the Galaxy S brand.
