Samsung Galaxy S8, S8+ has launched in India and the prices start at Rs 57,900; pre-order today, sale from 5 May

Samsung today announced the launch of its all-new flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+. The smartphones were announced alongside a long lineup of accessories and will go on sale at Rs 57,900 and Rs 64,900 for the S8 and S8+ models respectively. The Samsung Galaxy S8 and its bigger sibling the S8+ were first announced along with the new Gear 360 and Gear VR accessories at the global announcement held in New York. Since then, it has been a rather short wait for fans in India as the device has yet to go on sale globally, with a date set for 21 April. The devices will go on sale in India from 5 May, but can be pre-ordered from today.  Both the Galaxy S8 and S8+ feature an almost identical design along with matching hardware specifications except for the battery capacity and screen size. Both the Galaxy S8 and S8+ come with Android 7.0 out of the box with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI atop it. The devices are powered by Samsung’s very own Exynos 8895 –  Octa core (2.35 GHz Quad + 1.9 GHz Quad), 64-bit, 10 nm process. The chipsets make the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, the first phones to come to India with a 10nm framework that is supposed to deliver better battery life along with a 10 percent bump in CPU performance. The phones will come with 4 GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 64 GB of UFS 2.1 storage which is expandable to up to 256 GB using a microSD card. In terms of camera, both the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ come with a 12 MP dual pixel rear camera with an f/1.7 aperture and a front 8 MP camera with an f/1.7 aperture. The rear camera supports optical image stabilisation.  A key highlight which was available for demo at launch was Samsung’s new smart digital voice assistant called Bixby. The best part about Bixby is its ability to automate tasks or practically do anything in an app using voice that can otherwise be accomplished by touch. Indeed this would need support from third-party app developers. But sadly, users will not get to use the voice features of Bixby because it just won’t be available at launch. According to a statement issued by Samsung, Bixby’s voice features would only be available from spring this year. Both the devices support fast charging on wired and wireless charging standards, there is also an added support for NFC and MST payment via the recently announced Samsung Pay .