Launched last June, the Samsung Galaxy Win Duos, also known as the Galaxy Grand Quattro in other parts of the globe is the first dual-SIM quad-core phone from Samsung.
Design and Construction
The Galaxy Win Duos comes only in white, and is a combination of glass, chrome bezel and a plastic back plate similar with other phones in the Galaxy line.
It has a 4.7″ capacitive touch screen that has an 800 x 480 resolution (198 ppi), which isn’t really much and you’ll quickly notice it when you turn on the phone and see the icons and big text. You’ll get a VGA camera at the front as well as the proximity sensor. It has the Duos branding on the top right to differentiate it from the single-SIM variant.
It has the all-too familiar Home button and two almost invisible capacitive buttons for the Menu and Back options below the display. It doesn’t have an ambient light sensor to automatically control brightness as well as the gyroscope, but it does have an accelerometer and digital compass.
You can find the power/sleep/wake button on the right side and the volume rockers on the left. The microUSB port is located at the bottom and you’ll find the headphone jack at the top.
At the back you have the LED flash, a 5MP camera and the speaker grille all in the same line.
Inside, you’ll find a removable 2000mAh Li-ion battery, slots for microSIM cards and a removable microSD card. The primary SIM slot is located under the battery while the second one is at the side making it hot-swappable.
The phone does feel solid and pleasant to handle, thanks to the smooth and curved angles. It’s a little heavy for its size though at 143.9g but you’ll eventually get used to it.
Performance
At the heart of this phone is a 1.2 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor with an Adreno 203 GPU and 1 GB of RAM. It’s the recent budget quad-core chip from Qualcomm which has a last-generation GPU so don’t expect it to perform alongside the Galaxy S4. It runs Android v4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) overlayed with Samsung’s TouchWiz interface.
Quadrant score of 4635
It doesn’t have LTE unlike their Mega 6.3, but you won’t miss it much as LTE isn’t ubiquitous yet and would just drive the price of the handset up and life of your handset down. Still, it would have been nice. Also nice would be Bluetooth 4.0 instead of 3.0, as this would help with conserving battery life.
It’s worth noting that out of the 8GB internal storage of the Galaxy Win Duos, the user only gets about 5GB for their apps and files. If you’re planning to use this to store your media, we strongly suggest you but an extra memory card (up to 32GB).
Thanks to the quad-core and graphics processor, playing games and graphics rendering is adequately fast as expected. Video playback is ok, but I was not able to play HD videos with it (video was not rendering, but you can hear the sound).
Camera
The camera interface is the same with the Galaxy Grand. Its 5 megapixel camera takes decent enough shots in daylight, but suffers on low-light situations. The LED flash will help for close-ups but not much else. The colors tend to be just a little washed out as with other camera phones in the same price point. At the front you have a VGA camera to take your selfies. Overall, the camera didn’t us impress much.
Battery
The 2000mAh battery on the Galaxy Win Duos is above average for its size. A full charge lasted us throughout the day of moderate use for calls and text, browsing via 3G, and a bit of music on the side. It also has a power saving mode which you can switch on to adjust the screen frame rate and brightness to give you more juice out of a single charge.
Verdict
I find the Galaxy Win Duos an OK phone, but for the Php 14,990.00 price I find it sort of a tough sell. The things going for it would definitely be the the quad-core processor and the fact that it’s dual-SIM which is still uncommon for a Samsung phone. This would make a very adequate secondary phone for power users who keep multiple numbers, and a good first phone for those wants a dual-SIM quad-core phone from a brand that they can trust.
| Samsung Galaxy Win Specs: |
|---|
| 4.7-inch WVGA (480 x 800) TFT display, 199 ppi |
| 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm MSM8625Q Snapdragon 200 processor |
| Adreno 203 GPU |
| 1GB RAM, 8GB internal storage, microSD up to 64GB |
| Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean with TouchWiz UI |
| Dual-SIM |
| 5-megapixel autofocus rear camera with LED flash |
| 720p video recording @ 30 fps |
| VGA front camera |
| HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps |
| Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot |
| Bluetooth 3.0 |
| FM Radio |
| 2000 mAh Li-Ion battery |
| 133.3 x 70.7 x 9.7 mm |
| 143.9g |
| SRP: Php14,990 |
