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Samsung made some interesting decisions with the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+ this year. Not only did they remove the hardware home button that has defined the South Korean tech giant for so many years, but they also stretched the screen more than they ever have before. This resulted in a higher screen-to-body ratio than they’ve had in the past, and allowed them to fit bigger screens in a smaller form factor.
A number of smartphone OEMs have launched two different versions of their flagship over the last few years. One of them has been smaller (generally around 5″ to 5.2″) while also offering a larger version (at around 5.5″ to 5.7″) for those who like a bigger screen. Samsung could have kept with the same screen size this year as they did last year, which would have produced much smaller phones overall. Instead they settled on a 5.8″ display for the regular Galaxy S8 and 6.2″ for the larger Galaxy S8+.
This is rather unique because phones with a 6.2″ display are very hard to come by these days. Most OEMs will not take the risk and use a phone with a display that large for a flagship. So the OEMs who do release such phones do so by putting them on a mid-range phone and releasing it after their flagship is already on the market. But again, Samsung was able to avoid the Galaxy S8+ from being a monster of a phone because of how they handled bezels.
While some would have thought this was a big risk for Samsung to take, it actually looks to have been a huge success for the company. Not only is Samsung seeing more pre-orders for the S8 and S8+ (which is impressive after the Galaxy Note 7 debacle) than they saw last year with the S7, but a report from Yuanta Securities Korea Co. states the S8+ will outsell the regular Galaxy S8. The company is expecting Samsung to sell 50.4 million units worldwide and that 53.9% (or 27.1 million units sold) of those units will be the Galaxy S8+.
Source: The Korea Herald
