Yes you read that right and no this isn't one of those eye-catching clickbait titles either. You can actually buy a Galaxy S8 in its home nation for a price lower than $180 ($177)/200,000 Won, but it wouldn't be "legal" as per Samsung's stipulations.

Reports have confirmed that certain online and offline retailers are providing their customers with subsidies worth a minimum of 600,000 Korean Won or $530 roughly! This effectively cuts down the S8's marked price of 935,000 Won ($825 roughly) to a selling price of 335,000 Won or about $295. Mind you, that's the "least" amount of subsidy on offer here. Legally, the retailer cannot sell the phone below 753,000 won or about $665.

If you are wondering why the retailers would do that, it is supposedly a ploy to keep their customers according to the reports. If you are wondering how they would make a profit out of virtually giving away such expensive smartphones, we have no clue either! Whatever the reasons are, I bet you are feeling pretty jealous right now.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)

As per a recent report published by Strategy Analytics, Samsung is selling their smartphones at $465 less than Apple on an average. This conclusion was reached after the firm established that the average selling price of iPhones is $692 and that of the Samsung smartphones is $227. This data is still somewhat dated though, given that the parameters were last updated at the end of Q4, 2016.

You can probably guess that this isn't really a big surprise since Apple only sells premium smartphones, while Samsung does business in every budget category out there. The difference wasn't so shocking before though, but we are guessing that's an obvious effect of the tremendous competition from Chinese manufacturers, who continue to grow in the emerging markets. As Xiaomi, OnePlus and others continue to take over the budget and mid-range segments, Samsung has no choice but to lower the prices in order to stay competitive. They are nevertheless, still the leader in all segments on a global basis.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)

It is going to be the 25th year of Intel's undisputed number one position in the chip manufacturing business, but latest stats and data analysis is predicting that things may not exactly go that way. Samsung is about to snatch that title of market leader in the semiconductor industry from Intel, thanks mainly to the Korean company's booming DRAM and NAND memory chip business.

According to IC Insights, Samsung may overtake Intel by the end of the second quarter of this year. Intel will possibly end up with revenue of 14.4 billion by the end of Q2, 2017, while Samsung will likely end the second quarter with 14.6 billion in revenues. A point to be noted here is that Intel still has a higher sales number; it's just that Samsung's chips are more expensive. Keep in mind though that this is just speculation at this point and we will have to wait a while to find out if this actually happens.

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)

Now that Samsung has started to update Bixby with the missing voice functionality in South Korea, they have also released multiple videos which demonstrate how good Bixby's voice functionality actually is. Unfortunately, they are only available in Korean at the moment, so don't expect to understand too much from the videos themselves, unless you know the language of course.

Nevertheless, the videos serve two purposes in my book. Firstly they show off the digital assistant's capabilities to help us use the phone completely with voice only. It can open apps, edit images, share them wherever you want them to be shared, launch the camera, take pictures/videos, change device settings and so much more. Secondly it confirms that Samsung's claims with Bixby at launch were on point, albeit a bit premature. We have linked all the videos throughout this article so that you can check them out for yourself. Enjoy!

Samsung promised a lot of things regarding Bixby during the launch event of the Galaxy S8 back in March. However, it disappointed fans across the world when Bixby was released with minimal features which did not even include basic voice commands that every other AI powered smartphone assistant has at this point of time. It only included Bixby Vision and a few other features like Bixby Home and Reminder; all of which has potential but feels incomplete nonetheless. That situation is about to change though as Samsung is now rolling out an update which will enable voice functionalities on Bixby. Currently, it is only going live in South Korea, but I am pretty sure the international rollouts should start within the next few days.

Now that voice command on the S8 is finally a possibility with Bixby, we will have to wait and see if it's actually good enough to do "everything" like Samsung claimed it would be during the launch event, or if it was just a gimmick. In any case, life is going to be hard for Bixby in the nations where Google Assistant is available for use. With its superior set of features, vast experience and the magic that is Google, the Assistant might prove too tough to compete with for Bixby; especially since the S8 also has it right out of the box!

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)