Samsung Galaxy S8 Preorders Now Online; Here’s What You Want To Know About Apple’s Latest iPhone Killer

On March 29, Samsung unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S8, finally confirming or debunking rumors about the handset. The nearly bezel-less Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus phones are already available for preorder through Best Buy and all four major US carriers in the US, The Verge said.

Fans who will preorder via Samsung’s dedicated site should expect shipments to arrive on April 21, which is the same time the devices are expected to arrive in on-site stores. Majority of the retailers have priced the handsets at USD750 for S8 and USD850 for S8 Plus, with the exception of Verizon and Best Buy. Verizon currently retails S8 at USD720, and the S8 Plus at USD840, while Best Buy offers discounts of up to USD100.

The S8 Galaxy versions were notoriously thinner and comes with more high resolution as compared to its predecessors and competitors, Buzzfeed observed. The devices also came in Siri’s biggest competitor in the market today - Bixby. The intelligent personal assistant can supposedly do anything on your phone with your voice and touch, but Samsung only demonstrated its capabilities with other Samsung default applications. Bixby, which can be activated via the side button, can also activate Bixby Home, a new app that feels like Google Now and includes information like email notifications, events, step tracker, and weather status.

However, CNET feels that activating Bixby is premature. Vanessa Hand Orellano reports for the tech site, “It only works with a handful of Samsung apps at launch, it can't find information online and it overlaps with a lot of the things Google Assistant already does much better. Right now, Bixby feels very beta and isn't the type of advanced personal assistant we expect to see in 2017.”