~ MamakTalk ~: Samsung’s Upcoming ‘On’ Series Handsets Imported Into India

2015年9月1日星期二

Samsung’s Upcoming ‘On’ Series Handsets Imported Into India

Two of Samsung’s rumored upcoming smartphones have been in the news for a while now. The Galaxy Grand On (SM-G550FY) and the Galaxy Mega On (SM-G600) are said to be part of Samsung’s new ‘On’ or ‘O’ lineup of handsets which are expected to be announced soon by the South Korean consumer electronics giant. Now a listing on India’s import and export tracking website Zauba indicates that these two upcoming smartphones have been imported into the country from South Korea in limited quantities for testing purposes. According to available information, while only three units of the SM-G550FY (Grand On) device were imported, at least sixty eight units of the SM-G600 (Mega On) were seemingly brought into the country by the way of air cargo via the IGI Airport in New Delhi, India.

The one interesting thing is that a number of batteries and travel adapters were separately imported, clearly marked as “For Testing Purpose & Evaluation & Not For Retail Sale”. The pricing info available seems to suggest that both the smartphones are going to be entry-level devices, as the import prices have been listed as Rs. 6,641 ($100) for the SM-G550FY and Rs. 6,499 ($98) for the SM-G600. Normally retail prices in India tend to be around 50 percent higher than the import prices listed on Zauba, after the addition of import duties and distributor / retailer markups. While that would mean only a price of around $150 at most for either of the two devices, Samsung’s premium pricing strategy probably means the handsets would be priced much higher, unless of course, Samsung is planning to introduce its “On” range as an online-only low-margin brand to compete with vendors like Xiaomi, Asus and Lenovo. In that case, does ‘On’ actually stand for online?

Talking about the hardware, while the latest leak doesn’t tell us a whole lot about the upcoming handset, according to prior leaks, the Grand On is believed to come with a 5-inch screen, while the Mega On is believed to sport a 5.5-inch screen with a 720p display. The larger device will very likely be powered by a Qualcomm MSM8916 Snapdragon 410 chipset, which comes with a quad-core CPU clocked at 1.2 GHz and an Adreno 306 GPU. The handset is said to have 1.5 GB of RAM and 8 GB of internal storage. The phone will feature a 13-megapixel camera on the rear along with a 5-megapixel camera on the front. Previous leaks have claimed that the SM-G600 will also have a microSD card slot for capacity expansion and come with a 3,000 mAh battery. As for the smaller Grand On, it is supposed to be powered by an Exynos 3475 chipset, which will have a quad-core CPU clocked at 1.3GHz. The device is also said to come with 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel primary camera and a 2,600 mAh battery.