Theta Android News: We asked, you told us: There’s one clear reason you didn’t buy a Galaxy S20

Thursday, May 21, 2020

We asked, you told us: There’s one clear reason you didn’t buy a Galaxy S20

Samsung Galaxy S20 Back 2

Each year, the latest entries in the Galaxy S line become some of the biggest hits in the smartphone market. However, it doesn't look like the Samsung Galaxy S20 series is selling nearly as well as it has in previous years — although there's still plenty of time left in 2020 for the tide to change. There's lots of competition out there, though.

In an article I wrote about the alleged low sales of the Samsung Galaxy S20 line I included a poll. The poll asks a pretty basic question: why didn't you buy the Galaxy S20? That poll received over 3,000 answers, and the results give us a very clear look at the main reason people are skipping the devices.

Below, you'll find the results of the poll as well as some comments from you, our readers. Also, be sure to check out my ruminations about what this news could mean for the industry as a whole.

Why didn't you buy a Samsung Galaxy S20?

The poll asked the simple question above and gave the option for four possible answers. They were:

Just too damned expensive.
No headphone jack, no buy.
No reason to pay a premium for 5G.
Another reason, I'll let you know in the comments.

Most polls we run here at Android Authority feature a healthy mix of responses. With this one, though, there was one answer that topped them all: "Just too damned expensive." You can see below that nearly 71% of the 3,771 answers chose that reply — that's 2,403 of you.

See how it all breaks down in this chart:

It is interesting to see that there are folks who don't mind the prices of the Samsung Galaxy S20 line as much as they do the removal of the headphone jack. However, more people said that paying a premium for 5G this early in that technology's lifecycle was more of a factor than price or the lack of the headphone jack.

Even the ability to get out of those three answers by choosing "Another reason" didn't offset the results by much. It's very clear that the pricing of the Samsung Galaxy S20 is the biggest reason why our readers aren't buying one.

To be fair to Samsung, it's not entirely the company's fault pricing is so high for the phones. Qualcomm's flagship chipset for 2020, the Snapdragon 865, is incredibly expensive and that cost gets passed onto us consumers.

However, the smartphone industry as a whole is pushing 5G hard — perhaps a little too hard. With the immense power it holds over the industry, Samsung could definitely be doing more to stop the premium pricing for 5G materials. It isn't, though, and we'll see how that plays out.

Your comments

Here's what some folks had to say about the Samsung Galaxy S20 poll above. These are sourced from Android Authority as well as our Twitter feed.

AnySmarterIdRunLinux:
Price to Value ratio. And there is no value in the changes from the S10. This is the perfect combination of added features that people don't want and the removal of those that people do. I don't think the absolute cost is the issue. But people won't spend more money than they have to, and last year's phone for $600 less does the same thing.

Julien Lamy:
Tired of the 3 year only software update, for this kind of price we should expect at least 5 years of device life.

Whatever5000:
I really wanted to get the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra but the 512GB version, if you could even get it, was €1,579 (that's about $1,800). So it was price and nothing else that made me say "no thanks." I might get one later when the price has dropped to closer to €1,000.

@bigboimoisty:
A really expensive phone coming out during a damn pandemic. What can go wrong?

@leviathan026:
I'm in the "No Headphone Jack, No Buy" camp and I'm still satisfied with my Galaxy S10 Plus.

We'll need to wait and see how Samsung responds to all this. Will the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 launch with a lower-than-expected price? Will Samsung announce price drops for the Galaxy S20 line this summer, something it's done in the past? It's anyone's guess at this point, but it's very clear there are some big problems with the Samsung Galaxy S20 line in the eyes of our readers.