It's been an exciting day for those looking to get their hands on the Samsung Galaxy S4, pre-orders have opened and all the contract tariffs have been revealed. There are even a number of giveaways and incentives being offered by several of the networks and retailers to get your hard-earned moolah. Fun times. Well, until you realise that the new Samsung flagship phone is a staggering £100 more expensive than even the iPhone 5.

Carphone Warehouse is the only one of the high street stores that has listed a SIM-free price for pre-order, and has tagged it at £629.95. And we believe that's for the 16GB version. Although the retailer hasn't listed the storage capacity of the model on offer, every other pre-order open in the UK is for the 16GB edition, so it's a safe bet that this one is too.

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We'll be checking on that to confirm it with Carphone Warehouse, but even if it is the 32GB SGS4, that would still be approximately £30 more expensive than the iPhone 5.

The Samsung handset's biggest rivals in the premium Android smartphone space, the HTC One and Sony Xperia Z, both enter the market £519, and the One offers 32GB of storage for that price.

READ: Are premium Android smartphones worth it?

If the Carphone Warehouse price is genuine (Clove does offer it at £579.99, but is not a high street retailer), this Snapdragon 600 quad-core Samsung phone is one of the most expensive (non-luxury) we've encountered yet.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 will be available from 26 April. All major networks and retailers are now offering it for pre-order in the UK.