Samsung is set to unveil its flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ in India today. At an event scheduled for 12:30PM in New Delhi. Samsung will launch its 2018 flagships in India in line with the global launch. The Galaxy S flagships usually take around a month to come to India after their global unveil, so there seems to have been a shift in strategy and Indian customers can get their hands on the Galaxy S9 and the S9+ at same time as their global counterparts. You can watch the live webcast of the launch event here.
The Galaxy S9 and the S9+ was launched ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and this time, the phone comes touting a dual-aperture camera that supposedly improves low-light photography. DxOMark, the camera-testing firm, has placed the Galaxy S9 ahead of both the Apple iPhone X and the Google Pixel 2 in its rankings. The Samsung India store has already opened pre-booking right after the launch event. For Rs 2,000, users can pre-book the phone before the India launch.
Globally, the phone is set to go on sale from March 16, which should be the same for India as well. The smaller Galaxy S9 starts from $720 in the US, which rougly converts to Rs 47,000, while the Galaxy S9+ will start from $840, approximately Rs 54,000 when converted directly.
However, according to a Reddit post, which claims to have official documents highlighing the price states that the 64GB Galaxy S9 could be priced at Rs 62,500, while the 265GB variant could retail for Rs 71,000. The 64GB Galaxy S9+ could be priced at Rs 70,000, while the 256GB variant of the same will sell for Rs 79,000. Curiously missing is the 128GB variant that has been promised for US and other markets.
The main highlight of the Galaxy S9 is its new improved camera. The Galaxy S9 features a single-camera setup at the back with dual apertures — F/1.5 for low-light shots and F/2.4 for normal shots. The Galaxy S9+ also comes with the same dual aperture camera, but with two sensors at the back, similar to the Galaxy Note 8. The dual cameras are used to leverage portrait mode, which Samsung calls 'Live Focus'. We broke down the camera features to explain how everything works here.
The smaller Galaxy S9 features a 5.8-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED panel powered by the Exynos 9810 chipset in India, and coupled with 4GB of RAM. The S9+ features a larger 6.2-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display with the same 10nm chipset underneath coupled with up to 6GB of RAM. The S9 and S9+ also come with new AR Emoji, which uses your facial experessions to animate Emoji and can be shared across all media.
We had a look at the new flagships from Samsung and jotted down our initial impressions of the phones. You can read it here.