The Samsung Galaxy S5 will hit stores in India today. The company had initiated pre-orders a couple of weeks back itself. Samsung?s S Carpet event to herald the launch in North India will feature actor Lisa Haydon.
However, it remains to be seem what the final price of the phone will be. During the launch late in March, the company had not announced a selling price and instead chose to place it in a price bracket of between Rs 51,000 and Rs 53,000. Since the US Dollar has remained more or less stable since, we believe the price will not be much higher than the Rs 51,000 lower bracket.
The only problem here is that even this price tag could be a bit too steep for a lot of aspiring buyers. However, Samsung is sure that it will be able to offer a cheaper alternative within its product range for people who are unable to afford the Samsung Galaxy S5.
Incidentally, 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.
The company will also make available the new Galaxy Gear range and Gear Fit band along with the Samsung Galaxy S5. It is expected that a lot of people might opt for the combo. 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.
