The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus will be available for purchase in 110 markets around the world by the end of the month, Samsung confirmed Friday. The company’s newest Android flagships officially released today following a two-week pre-order period and are already retailing in the West and other parts of the globe. The worldwide commercial debut of the latest lineup covers approximately 70 markets, whereas its availability will expand to 40 more throughout March, though the specifics of the rollout remain undisclosed. In the United States, the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus are already available for purchase from every major wireless carrier and retailer as of midnight, with American consumers having access to some of the most aggressive promotions and incentives on the planet, including a $350 trade-in deal that’s still being offered.
As is often the case with ultra-premium smartphones from Samsung, not all color variants can be purchased globally, with the Titanium Gray option still being most widely available in North America. Most European consumers can choose between the Coral Blue, Midnight Black, and Lilac Purple options, with the latter two also being launched in Asia. Samsung is likely to introduce multiple limited editions of its new handsets going forward and may also end up receiving new colors later in the year, much like the Galaxy S8 series did. The last revision of Samsung’s 2017 flagship family was announced in November, with the company unveiling the Burgundy Red models of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus.
The new series is an evolutionary upgrade over the previous one in terms of aesthetics, with Samsung being more focused on improving the internal hardware of its high-end offerings this year. The end result of that effort are two critically acclaimed devices which are striving to retain everything consumers loved about the 2017 handsets while debuting improvements in a number of key areas such as mobile photography and artificial intelligence computing. The phablets also ship with new 10nm chips promising an unprecedented level of performance and efficiency, as well as variable-aperture lenses capable of mechanically switching between the f/1.5 and f/2.4 f-stops.