Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge Pre-Orders Top 20 Million

Samsung president J.K. Shin was under the gun to launch a flagship phone that would fare better than the Galaxy S5, and it looks like he's done it. Between the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, it's being reported that Samsung has received around 20 million pre-orders since announcing the new handsets at Mobile World Congress last week.

Citing an unnamed top executive at a leading carrier in Europe, The Korea Times says that 15 million of those pre-orders belong to the Galaxy S6 and 5 million to the Galaxy S6 Edge from various mobile carriers. Collectively, that's a record for Samsung and an early indicator that it made the right decision to revamp the design, even though it came at the expense of some long-standing features.

One of the casualties of switching from a plastic chassis with a removable backplate to a metal and glass design is that the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge aren't waterproof. Samsung also had to sacrifice removable batteries, and there's also no microSD card slot on either device for expanded storage. These features have all been staples of past Galaxy handsets that have given Samsung bragging rights over Apple's iPhone line, which lack the same features.

Nevertheless, smartphone buyers seem intrigued by the premium design and, in the case of the Galaxy S6 Edge, the curved edge display that wraps around both sides of the phone. Samsung's new handsets also introduce a host of hardware upgrades, including an octa-core processor (2.1GHz quad + 1.5GHz quad) and 3GB of DDR4 memory.

Samsung has to be thrilled with the initial response, especially after see its first market-share loss in the smartphone segment since 2010.