Samsung Galaxy S5 officially launched in India; will cost between Rs 51,000 and Rs 53,000

Samsung has launched its latest flagship the Galaxy S5 in India and the so-called ‘next big thing’ has a hefty price tag as well as the top-of-the-line specs. The phone will be priced between Rs 51,000 and Rs 53,000, according to Samsung, who declined to reveal the final price. This is for the 16GB version as the 32GB variant will not be making it to India.   The S5 will be on pre-order from March 29 and will go on sale from April 11. The Galaxy S5 will be available in black, white, blue and gold in India, along with the three Gear watches that were also launched for India.   We have already examined the Galaxy S5’s features and specs and there’s no mystery about the phone. But the S5 launching in India has the Exynos octa-core processor and not the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801, as announced at MWC. This is the first time that this variant has hit retail in the world. Samsung has made changes in the processor as compared to the S4 and now the octa-core CPU can have all eight cores running at the same time.   The S5 is an itinerant update over last year’s S4 and features a slightly bigger display with the same Super AMOLED panel and 1080p resolution. Samsung has added a fingerprint scanner in the home button and a heart rate monitor on the back under the camera, which are two highlights of this phone. As a result of the waterproofing treatment, the phone has significantly larger bezels.   Another area where Samsung claims great advancements is the camera. There’s a 16-megapixel main camera on the S5, armed with interesting editing options and several shooting modes, including selective focus. Initial reviews have all put the S5’s camera among the best in the world and we are itching to test it out ourselves.   The Galaxy S5 comes to the market just at the time when the new HTC One and the renewed LG G2 are hitting stores so competition will be fierce. There’s no doubt that the S5 has great hardware and looks very much like a Samsung flagship, which is not as bad as people assume it would be. But the biggest criticism is that Samsung has not tried to bring anything new in terms of design and is not really pushing the specs envelope as much as it did with the S4 and S3 in the past.