In a surprising move, Samsung has released a new Galaxy S5 (G900L) variant in India, which supports the recently deployed LTE network in the country. 

Do note that this is not the LTE-A variant of the Galaxy S5 that Samsung released a few weeks back in Korea with a QHD AMOLED screen and a Snapdragon 805 processor. Instead, the G900L sports the same specs as the S5 variant sold in Europe and United States: a Snapdragon 801 processor clocked at 2.5GHz, Adreno 330 GPU and an integrated LTE modem from Qualcomm.

Other specs of the handset remain exactly the same as its Exynos sibling which includes 2GB of RAM, 16GB storage space, a microSD card slot, a 16MP ISO-CELL camera at the rear, a heart rate sensor below it and a swipe-based fingerprint sensor integrated into the home button on the front.

Samsung has always launched its Galaxy S and Note series of devices in India with an Exynos chip under the hood. This is the first time that the company has released the Snapdragon version in India. In all probability, this is because of the poor sales of the S5 and the lack of LTE on the Exynos version, which puts it at a slight disadvantage against its competitors like the HTC One M8 and the LG G3.

The handset will only be sold in cities where the LTE network is present for an MRP of Rs. 56,000 and an MOP of Rs. 50,000. The company is also bundling 5GB of free LTE data for two months for all the new customers of Airtel’s LTE network.