Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+ India Launch on April 19,

Samsung India on Friday confirmed that the new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ will be launched in the country next week, on Wednesday. In a tweet, Samsung India wrote, "India, get ready to #UnboxYourPhone! Samsung #GalaxyS8 #GalaxyS8Plus, India launch on 19th April, 2017."

It's worth noting that the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are already up for pre-registrations in India. We can expect to get clarity on the availability and pricing of the phones at the launch event. In India, the company will launch the Samsung Exynos 8895 SoC-based variants of the smartphones, and not the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC variants that are limited to select regions like the US. However, this should not be too much of an issue, as some benchmarks show Samsung's chip to outperform Qualcomm's.

Samsung is yet to officially announce the pricing of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ smartphones. Soon after March 29 launch, Verizon Wireless had the lowest rates, at $720 (roughly Rs. 46,700) for the Galaxy S8 and $840 (roughly Rs. 54,500) for the Galaxy S8+. Prices go up to $750 (roughly Rs. 48,700) and $850 (roughly Rs. 55,200) respectively. We can expect the India pricing of the handsets to be around the US pricing. Samsung's Galaxy S8 will be going on sale in South Korea, the United States and Canada from April 21.

For Samsung, the new premium phones are claimed to bring the "start of a new era." The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ will debut the company's in-house voice-based virtual assistant named Bixby which will be taking on other voice-based virtual assistants powered by artificial intelligence including Apple's Siri, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana and Amazon's Alexa. The Galaxy S8 will come with a set of pre-installed apps that will work with Bixby. The South Korean company however has confirmed that the AI-powered assistant's Voice feature will be missing from the phones at the global launch on April 21.

Some of the highlights of the Galaxy S8 is the iris recognition while the company also introduced its Microsoft Continuum-like feature, Samsung DeX, which will let users use smartphone like a computer by docking it to monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Similar to the Galaxy S7, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are dust and water resistant with IP68 certification. Both the handsets run on the company's UI based on Android 7.0 Nougat.