Where was my Samsung Galaxy smartphone made?
**Samsung is one of the world’s largest companies and has helped to put South Korea on the map as one of the homes of cutting edge consumer technology. **Although the Samsung Galaxy S4 is two generations old, it still proves to be a popular device for Android fans all over the world. A staggering 40 million units have been sold internationally since its launch, which continues to increase. But where is Samsung Galaxy S4 Smartphone made and what route has it taken before it reached your pocket?
Origin story
Samsung is very proud of its heritage and it tends to keep most of the process of producing its various products in-house and in South Korea. The Galaxy S4 was designed, extensively tested and produced in Samsung’s native land.
Samsung is unusual among mobile manufacturers in that it tends to use its own hardware components to produce its handsets, rather than sourcing them from third parties, as it actually has the resources to achieve this. So everything from the processor to the screen of the Galaxy S4 Smartphone has been developed over in South Korea, which is an impressive feat.
Putting together the pieces
Samsung has huge manufacturing plants in South Korea which it uses to build the Galaxy S4 and many of its other handsets, but that does not mean that every single model available to buy is assembled on Korean soil.
The quickest way to work out whether your Galaxy S4 Smartphone came from Korea or from one of Samsung’s factories in Vietnam, which is also where this phone is built, is to look beneath the battery, where a little sticker should tell you all you need to know.
Samsung announced earlier in the year that it would be making the Galaxy S4 in India to help it penetrate this valuable marketplace, although admittedly most of the devices built here will stay within the country rather than being sold elsewhere, so you are not likely to find an Indian Galaxy S4 in the UK unless you import it.
No matter where the Galaxy S4 has been assembled, it should have the same basic functions. Since the UK version uses a quad core processor rather than an octo-core chip, it does have some differences from the international model, but this doesn’t do much to impact performance and means that 4G connectivity is available.
Box clever
Samsung’s huge operations tend to involve many of the world’s major network providers, particularly in the UK where the population can easily afford high end models like the Galaxy S4 Smartphone.
Depending on how you acquire your Galaxy S4 Smartphone you might find that it has been altered and branded by your provider of choice, mostly making aesthetic changes to the interface and packaging. This will also leave it locked to a single provider, so you will have to go for a SIM-free model if you want the freedom to switch.
The process of manufacturing and distributing tens of millions of mobiles is impressive in itself, but becomes even more astonishing when you consider that the Galaxy S4 is just one of Samsung’s models.