SK Telecom officially released TG&Co.’s mid-tier Luna S smartphone in South Korea on Wednesday, seeking to win over customers looking for a premium smartphone at a lower cost.

Priced at 568,700 won ($506), the Luna S is available in four colors — classic gold, natural silver, rose pink and frozen blue — and sold exclusively through SKT retailers and the telecom firm’s online shopping mall T World Direct.


Those who select the most-popular Band Data Perfect payment plan (65,890 won per month) — which offers unlimited data, calls and text messages — will receive a subsidy of 282,000 won, reducing the device’s price to 286,700 won.

The Luna S is an upgraded handset based on its predecessor Luna, promoted to success here by Seolhyun of K-pop girl group AOA last year, according to SKT.

The new Luna S includes features typically available only on high-end smartphones. It boasts a 5.7-inch (14.5 centimeters) quad-HD display, 4 gigabytes of RAM, fingerprint sensors and a 13-megapixel front camera with autofocus functions for taking improved selfies, SKT said.

The Luna S is slated to go head-to-head with a number of competing mid-priced premium smartphones from both local and foreign tech firms.

Last week, Samsung Electronics released its newly upgraded Galaxy A8 smartphone, priced at 649,000 won. The device is fitted with a full-metal design and features upgraded battery power, more memory space and advanced cameras in comparison to last year’s model.

At the same time, Japanese electronics giant Sony also released the Xperia XZ priced at 798,600 won, its latest model featured as part of the flagship X smartphone series, in Korea.

The 5.2-inch (13.2 centimeters) Xperia XZ runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 Processor and has 32 gigabytes of internal memory. The phone comes with a fingerprint scanner and high-resolution audio processing technologies, among other features.

By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)