SK Telecom tried to convince it to change the availability date

Mar 26, 2014 20:51 GMT  ·  By

Galaxy S5, the latest flagship Android-based smartphone from South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung Electronics, won’t arrive in South Korea before April 11, as initially scheduled, it seems.

Despite the fact that carriers in the country have been banned from selling new devices for various periods of time until May 19, Samsung will not modify its release schedule to ensure higher sales, it seems.

One of the wireless carriers that will suffer the most from this is SK Telecom, which won’t be able to sell new devices between April 5 and May 19.

This means that the operator will join the Galaxy S5 party only in the second half of May, over a month after other carriers in the country have had it.

Apparently, SK Telecom did try to persuade Samsung to bring the phone to shelves in South Korea earlier, maybe as soon as this week, but the company refused.

According to previous reports on the matter, the Galaxy S5 might have landed in the country on March 27, had Samsung agreed to make the change.

However, this won’t happen, and the phone will be released in the company’s homeland market only next month, when it arrives in other countries around the world as well.

“Samsung hasn’t agreed with SK Telecom for an early release of our GS5 to only SK Telecom customers,” JK Shin, co-CEO and head of Samsung's mobile division, said, according to The Korea Times.

Samsung is still planning launch events for Galaxy S5 in some countries for tomorrow but is expected only to announce local availability of the phone, along with details on its pricing.

The actual release should happen only next month, when Samsung plans on bringing the phone to shelves in no less than 150 countries worldwide.

Galaxy S5 was made official last month, during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, as Samsung’s latest Android-based flagship, featuring a dust- and water-resistant body, and high-end hardware specs inside.

The phone features a 5.1-inch full HD screen, a 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor inside, 2GB of RAM, and a 16-megapixel camera on the back, with 4K video recording capabilities.

When brought to shelves, it will meet strong competition from handsets such as Sony Xperia Z2, which went official at MWC 2014 too, and HTC One M8, which was unveiled yesterday, but has already been put up for sale in some markets out there, such as the United States, Canada, and the UK.