Smartphone manufacturers tend to market their product at the launch event and sometimes they go a little more forward. At the launch of Samsung’s Galaxy S8 last month in March 2017, Samsung’s Senior Vice President, Product Strategy – Justin Denison took the stage and said something which might be a little deceiving.
First spotted by Pocketnow, Justin Denison went on record and said that the earphones which ships with the Galaxy S8 are from AKG. However, it turns out to be slightly off track here. In reality, the headsets are designed and manufactured by Samsung and are ‘Tuned’ by AKG. Interestingly, Samsung has pushed AKG branding on these headsets which might deceive anyone to believe that they are from AKG.
A similar case was cited by Pocketnow with LG last year where it collaborated with AKG to tune the headsets shipping with their flagship smartphone. But LG actually went in with its own branding. The AKG headsets are currently retailing for $99.00 (approx. Rs 6300) which is a pretty expensive accessory to give with the box. If you are not aware, AKG was long back acquired by Harman which was recently acquired by Samsung, hence, this partnership.
So is this a marketing strategy or a slip of a tongue at the launch event? Well, it is certainly not viable to comment on this as of now. But what we can confirm is that the headsets in your Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ box are not from AKG instead they are just tuned by AKG. So if that was one of the reasons, we hope it is not, you went for the Galaxy S8 or S8+, then you might be disappointed here.
Nevertheless, the headphones are of still decent quality but you will not be blown away with the sound coming out of it. The low and highs (vocals) are far from impressive and you might wonder if they are actually tuned by AKG. These are our first impressions so things might change once we test out them thoroughly. Fiddling around with the equaliser does help but that isn’t the permanent solution. Still, we would recommend you to stay tuned with us as we bring out the full review of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the AKG tuned headsets.
Image Courtesy: Soundguys