Galaxy S21 Series set a new Pre-Sales Record, Android 12 Leaks

When the Galaxy S21 pre-sales first began, there were some conflicting reports about its market performance, with some publications alleging that the series isn’t doing well because of lack of new distinguishing features compared to last year and others claiming that the lineup is going to do great because of the low prices.

 

Samsung has now cleared the air by revealing that the Galaxy S21 broke all the previous records of Galaxy S series pre-sales in two key markets.

 

The phone is off to a tremendous start in the UK, smashing all previous Galaxy S series pre-order records.

 

According to Samsung UK, the Galaxy S21 outperformed both the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S20 sales in the pre-order period. 

 

Samsung UK hasn’t revealed exactly how many Galaxy S21 units were pre-ordered but said, the highest-end Galaxy S21 Ultra was the main driving force.

 

It accounted for over 50% of all the S21 pre-orders in the UK, in other words, the pre-order figures of the S21 Ultra were more than both the Galaxy S21 and the Galaxy S21+ combined.

 

This further strengthens the belief that if a phone is good enough, its price tag won’t matter for a lot of consumers.

 

The case is similar in South Korea as well, where the pre-orders for the company’s latest high-end phones are 15 to 20% higher than the Galaxy S20.

 

Although, Samsung hasn’t released the exact stats, the record-breaking pre-orders are an indication that if you price your handsets right then people will buy your phones.

 

It remains to be seen if this strategy will work in the long run but for now, things are looking good for Samsung, but we’ll wait for other reports to release data on how many units the technology giant actually sold.

 

Google's Android 12 is coming this year and while we are patiently waiting for that a bunch of screenshots of Android 12 has been leaked which shows some major redesign is coming along with some important privacy features.

 

These screenshots allegedly come from a document that Google made to summarize the changes in the new version. A new notifications panel UI can be seen in one of the screenshots.

 

It now has an opaque background and more pronounced rounded corners for each notification. There seem to be four Quick Settings tiles that are bigger in size instead of the usual six.

 

The date and time that appears on the top left of the notifications panel have been interchanged. The top right of the notifications panel shows new icons, presumably for privacy features in Android 12 like the icons that show up in the top right to let you know that an app is using your camera or microphone.

 

If you tap those icons you'll get a pop-up telling you which app is using what. It could allow a user to completely disable the camera, microphone, and location access.

 

These camera and mic usage indicators are apparently going to be mandated by Google

to be included by all OEMs.

 

In terms of changes to the widgets, there now seems to be a ‘Conversations' widget that may show recent messages, missed calls or activity statuses.

 

All in all, pretty happy that just like Apple, Google is taking Privacy more seriously and I like how clean the UI looks, has the Clubhouse color tan going on, the new changes are much appreciated.