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Samsung believes the Galaxy S27 Pro will be a big hit, but I don't really understand why
The Galaxy S27 Pro is reportedly set to be produced in higher numbers than the Galaxy S27 and S27 Plus even though it doesn't have the makings of a blockbuster.
This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.
The Galaxy S27 Pro certainly looks promising, but not THAT promising. | Image by Android Headlines
Unless we're currently going through the most serious undiagnosed case of mass hysteria in the smartphone market's history, next year's Galaxy S27 family will include four main members instead of the S26's three, marking a return of sorts to Samsung's Galaxy S25 series strategy.
But the company's next big mainstream experiment has a far less experimental vibe to it than last year's S25 Edge, and because of that, the Galaxy S27 Pro's production goal has reportedly been set at a much higher level than not just its razor-thin ancestor but its upcoming "Standard" and Plus siblings as well.
With the mobile industry still in disarray due to rising component costs and shrinking global demand, I find it hard to believe that a compact and weirdly underpowered Galaxy S27 Ultra version could ever come close to selling 7 million units around the world for a few simple reasons I intend to elaborate on in the following lines.
Is this how a "premium" phone is supposed to look in 2027?
- 6.5-inch Dynamic AMOLED screen with 120Hz refresh rate technology;
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 processor;
- 12 and 16GB RAM options;
- 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB storage variants;
- 200MP primary rear-facing camera;
- 50MP secondary ultra-wide-angle lens;
- 10MP tertiary telephoto sensor with 3x optical zoom;
- 16MP front-facing camera;
- 5,200mAh battery;
- 60W charging support;
- Built-in Privacy Display functionality;
- No S Pen;
- $1,399 starting price.
Because beauty is in the eye of the beholder and plenty of devices yours truly has found to be pretty ugly over the years ended up proving hugely successful (hello there, Galaxy S21 Ultra!), I have no intention of saying anything about the appearance of the Galaxy S27 Pro and S27 Ultra's... unorthodox camera island.
One thing we can probably all agree on is that the Galaxy S27 Pro doesn't look like a Galaxy S26 clone in these early leaked renders. | Image by Android Headlines
But I definitely have some thoughts on the S27 Pro's camera hardware, and while I'm obviously delighted to hear that we'll be getting two Samsung phones with a 200MP main snapper... after the Galaxy S25 Ultra and S25 Edge in 2025, that 10MP telephoto lens doesn't sound very "Pro" to me.
What's perhaps even more concerning is that Samsung's second super-premium handset of early 2027 is currently expected to pack a slower processor than its Ultra brother while also lacking stylus support. If those compromises don't feel like potential deal breakers to you, it's important to take another look at that rumored price tag above and remember how much the Galaxy S26 Ultra normally costs.
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How popular do you think the Galaxy S27 Pro will prove?
That's right, the 6.5-inch or so Galaxy S27 Pro is likely to be just as expensive as the bigger and overall more sophisticated S26 Ultra, which seems simply absurd, even in today's (and tomorrow's) mobile landscape.
There's no (recent) precedent to boost Samsung's optimism
Yes, compact handsets (by modern standards) can be massively popular... if they're iPhones priced at a fraction of how much the Galaxy S27 Pro is expected to cost. Otherwise, jumbo-sized mobile devices seem to currently reign supreme, and that's true for both high-enders like the iPhone 17 Pro Max and Galaxy S26 Ultra and low-end models like the Galaxy A07 and Galaxy A17.
Granted, the 6.3-inch Galaxy S26 appeared to sell tremendously well in its first few months of global availability too, but I dare to interpret that as a success for the affordable high-end segment rather than the diminutive phone category.
There aren't a lot of compact phones among the world's bestsellers nowadays. | Image by Counterpoint Research
Of course, the 6.3-inch iPhone 17 Pro also proved almost as successful as its big brother, but that may have been because it "copied" all of the Pro Max's key features and specs (apart from the screen size), which we've already established isn't going to be the Galaxy S27 Pro and S27 Ultra's case.
Now, it must be said that we haven't seen many compact Android flagships in recent years (apart from Google's non-XL Pixel Pros, maybe) to suggest the Galaxy S27 Pro is doomed to flop, but in a way, even that makes me skeptical this 6.5-incher will be the huge hit Samsung purportedly expects it to be.
I don't think the Galaxy S27 Ultra will sell like hotcakes either
... and I actually already have the numbers to prove that. You know how Samsung is rumored to be prepping a total of around 35 million Galaxy S27-series devices for production, of which more than half should be taken up by the Ultra model?
Those may sound like big numbers (and in a way, they are), but they're also allegedly unchanged from the initial targets of the Galaxy S26 family and the S26 Ultra in particular. The problem is that companies like Samsung tend to set ambitious and generally higher goals for every new ultra-high-end phone and phone series... unless, of course, they're expecting sales to drop.
The S27 Ultra is expected to look similar to the S27 Pro, but obviously cost even more. | Image by Android Headlines
I believe that might be the case here, as Samsung knows it will be incredibly difficult for tens of millions of people to swallow the S27 Ultra's likely $1,600 starting price, but if that's true, I'm really not sure that many prospective buyers will look at the Galaxy S27 Pro instead.
As crazy as it sounds, there's a scenario in which the "vanilla" Galaxy S27 and the Galaxy S27 Plus could come close to the mainstream popularity of their more premium brothers... as long as they're priced aggressively enough. And while that scenario clearly doesn't sound ideal for Samsung's bottom line, the one in which the entire Galaxy S27 roster bombs is obviously even worse.
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