There had been rumors that the new Samsung Galaxy S8 was doing well in preorder sales, but Samsung has just made it official according to the Korea Herald – 620,000 units were sold in just five days, with the 128GB Galaxy S8 Plus “accounting for 150,000 units.” This is great news for Samsung as those figures top the record preorders garnered by the Galaxy Note 7 and easily more than the Galaxy S7. This surge in preorders could spell trouble for Samsung as they indicated that preorders have already matched up with their inventory meaning that there could be delays in shipments from the official April 21st release date. Much of the delays can be attributed to the low yield rates of the 10nm chips – the Snapdragon 835 and Exynos 8895 – used in the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. Samsung makes the chips for Qualcomm and part of the deal was to allow Samsung first dibs on using them in their new Galaxy S8 series, but with the low yield rate of the chips, it could spell trouble in meeting the demand. This might have played a part in why HTC and LG went with the Snapdragon 821 in their new flagships.
It is easy to see why the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus are selling in record numbers. Samsung redesigned the all glass flagship with a brand new, futuristic, and sexy look, and at the same time made it more functional and more secure. The new Infinity Display that literally wraps around the sides of the device with no bezels and introduces us to the 18.5:9 aspect ratio, gives the user a slightly taller and thinner device cramming more display in the same physical area as the Galaxy S7 (more or less). The top-of-the-line processors and GPUs make it lightning fast and capable of the most demanding graphics any movie or game can throw at it. The Home button, Back key, and App key are now on the display under a 3D Touch area – gone when not needed and only appearing when needed. It has the fingerprint sensor on the back and oddly close to the camera lens, but Samsung provides facial recognition and iris scanning to unlock the device without having to resort to the fingerprint sensor. The Galaxy S series offers up Samsung Health, Samsung Connect, Bixby, and Samsung DeX. The physical camera area stayed the same as Samsung decided to work on upgrading the camera software this time around.
The Samsung Galaxy S8 is a very intriguing device and given its preorder popularity, it may hit 1 million units before it is even released. Samsung can only hope that yield rates improve on the processing chips so there is no shortage to slow down this Galaxy juggernaut – something Samsung could use after the problems with the Galaxy Note 7.