Samsung Galaxy S8 is the company’s most expensive phone to build at over $300

The Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ go on sale this Friday 28 April, with the S8 costing £689 SIM-free. While spending nearly £700 on a phone can easily be seen as an expensive purchase, it could be seen as relatively cheap, considering what Samsung is claimed to pay to build each phone.

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Analytics company IHS Markit says each Galaxy S8 costs $307.50 (£240) to build. Samsung obviously needs to make a profit on each phone, but considering the specs and features you get, which are the best available on the market right now, £689 starts to look like a good price.

Combine this with some freebies you get thrown in, such as AKG-tuned headphones and gifts such as wireless speakers with select mobile networks and the price you’ll pay for a SIM-free Galaxy S8 could even be seen as a bargain.

$307.50 represents the most Samsung has ever spent on building a phone, as it’s $43.34 more than the South Korean company spent on making the Galaxy S7, and $36.29 more than it cost to build the Galaxy S7 Edge, which is arguably still a fantastic device.

It’s thought the faults with the Galaxy Note 7 could have played a part in deciding the price of the Galaxy S8, as Samsung needed to market the new phone in such a way so as to persuade consumers to stay loyal to the brand.

The exploding batteries of the Note 7 likely caused some customers to stray to other companies, so a low price for a fantastic device should tempt them back.

The price of the Galaxy S8 also seems cheap when you consider the iPhone 8 is expected to cost $1,000 or more, for a phone that will likely be similar in many ways.

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Andrew Rassweller, IHS’s senior director of cost benchmarking services said. “While there are new non-hardware features in the Galaxy S8, such as a virtual assistant called Bixby, from a teardown perspective the hardware in the Galaxy S8 and that of the forthcoming new iPhone is expected to be very similar.”