We go hands-on with the Galaxy Grand Prime duos!

We’re taking a look at Samsung’s newest mid-end smartphone, the Galaxy Grand Prime. The Galaxy Grand Prime is targeted squarely at the mid-end market, a market that the Korean giant once dominated. Samsung knows it’s besieged at all sides by upstarts and challengers, and the Grand Prime is one of their weapons to turn the tide. It’s not surprising then that the company’s newest mid-end smartphone packs Qualcomm’s newest 64-bit chips with mid-range pricing.

Galaxy Grand Prime duos specs

• 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 MSM8916 64-bit processor
• Adreno 306 GPU
• 1GB of RAM
• 5-inch qHD display, 540 x 960 resolution
• 8GB of storage expandable via microSD up to 64GB
• 8-megapixel rear camera with AF and flash
• 5-megapixel front camera
• Dual-SIM
• 3G, HSPA
• WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS, Glonass
• Android 4.4 KitKat
• 2600mAh battery
• 144.8 x 72.1 x 8.6 mm

Initial impressions: armed with a 64-bit chip, but won’t make too much of a difference until Android Lollipop rolls around

Before we go into the meat of the Galaxy Grand Prime, let’s talk about how it looks. The Galaxy Grand Prime looks much like Samsung’s other mid-range smartphones. It’s primarily a phone made out of plastic, with silver trims on the side of the device to give it a bit of visual punch. The 5-inch qHD display is surrounded by rather thick bezels, with the word Duos written in silver on the upper left of the device telling you it’s a dual-SIM smartphone.

Turn the phone over and you’re treated to the pearlescent white finish of the smartphone. The phone’s volume rocker is located on the left side while the power button is located on the right. On top sits the 3.5mm jack while the USB port is located on the bottom. Like most of Samsung’s other offerings the Galaxy Grand Prime Duos eschews capacitive Android navigation keys for a physical home key which are flanked by two additional navigation keys.

One of the main features of the Galaxy Grand Prime is its 64-bit quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor, which is a departure from the 32-bit Snapdragon 400 that’s usually used on other mid-range smartphones. 64-bit computing is leaps ahead of 32-bit, which give better efficiency when it comes to crunching numbers, which also consumes less power. The problem here is that 64-bit processors are useless when the OS isn’t made to take advantage of it, which is the case for Android 4.4 KitKat.

Our initial benchmark run on AnTuTu and Geekbench prove that point, as the synthetic benchmark scores of the new processor isn’t that much higher than the original 32-bit Snapdragon 400 processor. The upside is that the Galaxy Grand Prime is future ready for Android 5.0 Lollipop. When it arrives, we’re going to see higher benchmark scores for the device, as well as better overall performance.

Aside from the 64-bit processor, the Galaxy Grand Prime also sports a wide angle 5-megapixel front camera, which the company says is able to get more people in “groufies” compared to the competition.

The Galaxy Grand Prime’s SRP of Php 9,990 is also pretty aggressive, which shows that Samsung is serious about it’s intention to re-capture the mid-range market that’s managed to slip out of its grasp because of the efforts of other brands.

We’ll be doing the review for the Galaxy Grand Prime Duos later on.