NEW DELHI -- Coming as a sigh of relief for Samsung after the Note 7 fiasco last year, pre-orders for its new flagship Galaxy S8 and S8+ devices have reached 80,000 units within a week of the launch in India.
"The pre-orders are expected to hit 150,000 units by the end of this month," industry sources told IANS.
Packed with a voice assistant, the 5.8-inch Galaxy S8 and 6.2-inch Galaxy S8+ were listed on a Flipkart banner ad for pre-orders, starting from April 19.
According to the sources, the company saw 15 times more traffic than usual on Samsung e-store that led to a temporary downtime.
The pre-booking saw more than four times the pre-booking compared to the earlier Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge devices.
Early delivery for pre-booking customers will start from May 2 and owing to high demand of the black colour variants, the delivery date of these devices will start from May 12.
Asim Warsi, Senior Vice-President, Mobile Business, Samsung India told IANS: "We are overwhelmed with the response we have received for our flagships Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+. A special 'thank you' to the customers for such a magnificent response. We are confident that S8 and S8+ will further propel our growth and we will be able to sustain and strengthen our position in India".
Set to give Apple iPhones a tough competition, Samsung released the devices with a voice assistant called Bixby.
At Rs 57,900 and Rs 64,900, respectively, the S8 and S8+ devices with significantly larger screens, have re-engineered design with rounded edges and symmetrical sides make them compact and comfortable for one-handed operation.
The "Infinity Display" and bezel-less design gives a user 18 per cent more screen with no buttons. The physical home key on the front has given way to a more intuitive soft key with a pressure sensor that is embedded under the display.
For security, the company introduced an iris scanner, which is one of the most secure biometric identification systems on a phone.
Samsung S8 and S8+ have 12MP rear cameras with multi-frame processing and optical image stabilisation and 8MP auto-focus front shooters. The devices run on Android 7.0 Nougat. While S8 has a 3,000 mAh battery, S8+ boasts a 3,500 mAh battery.