Samsung’s South Korean promotion centers where consumers are able to try out the upcoming Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus attracted 1.6 million visitors over the first five days following the announcement of the tech giant’s latest pair of Android flagships, Yonhap News Agency reported Monday, citing a company official. The figure suggests more than three-percent of the country’s population wanted to personally experience the Galaxy S9 lineup last week, and that figure is likely to have grown over the weekend and will continue rising in the next ten days while the handsets still aren’t available for purchase. The vast majority of Samsung’s divisions around the world are presently offering consumers the chance to experience the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus before the phablets hit the market on March 16, with Samsung even advertising that opportunity via push notifications.
The Samsung Experience stores which already have the Galaxy S9 lineup on display are allowing consumers to try out the new AR Emoji feature and generate their own digital avatars using a single selfie. Augmented reality and artificial intelligence technologies are a large focus of Samsung’s latest Android offerings, with the company saying as much at its late February Unpacked event. Samsung has yet to disclose any pre-order figures of its upcoming devices whereas it already started touting the pre-sale performance of the Galaxy S8 lineup less than a week following its 2017 announcement.
The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus are largely targeted at refining the Galaxy S8 formula while retaining its overall aesthetic centered on the bezel-less Infinity Display panel with a QHD+ resolution and 18.5:9 aspect ratio. The handsets are powered by new chips boasting neural processing units meant to enable on-device AI computing. The devices also introduce variable-aperture lenses capable of automatically switching between f/1.5 and f/2.4 f-stops so as to balance image sharpness with low-light performance and in-camera bokeh. Samsung and its partners officially started accepting Galaxy S9 pre-orders last Friday, with the flagship duo being scheduled for a global release on March 16. The devices are likely to outsell all of their Android rivals released over the course of this year.