We review the Galaxy Grand Prime Duos!

Today we’ll be reviewing Samsung’s Galaxy Grand Prime Duos, a mid-range smartphone by Samsung sporting Qualcomm’s latest 64-bit Snapdragon 410 quad-core processor. The Grand Prime Duos is probably Samsung’s most bang-for-the-buck mid-range offering to date, priced at a measly Php 9,990.

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

Probably not the prettiest looking belle at the ball

While Samsung’s hi-end devices are starting to look as good as its competitors, their low and mid-range devices still have the same plasticky look to them as before. This extends to the Grand Prime Duos with its mostly plastic and gloss white body. The Grand Prime Duos isn’t going to win any beauty contests, but even though it doesn’t look it, it’s rather sturdily built, with excellent build quality.

The bezels are rather large, and there’s a silver trim running around the side of the Grand Duos to break up the monotony of the white chassis. Button arrangement is typical for a device the size of the Grand Duos, with the volume keys on the left and the power button on the right. The back uses a pearl white plastic cover that you can remove to reveal the removable battery, two SIM slots and the microSD card slot.

The Grand Duos uses a rather underwhelming 5-inch qHD display. While we’re disappointed that Sammy didn’t go ahead and use an HD panel on the Grand Duos, we’re happy to report that the display is crisp and vibrant. The display doesn’t have an ambient light sensor though, so you may have to manually adjust the brightness as you go about your daily routine.

Since this is a Samsung smartphone, it sports the company’s TouchWiz UI, similar to the one running on the Galaxy S5 and the Note 4. Take note that the phone runs Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box, which kind of negates the 64-bit capabilities of the Snapdragon 410 processor that powers the device (more on this later).

Good performance out of the processor, though 64-bit will have to wait until Lollipop

One of the main draws of the Galaxy Grand Prime is the new, 64-bit Snapdragon 410 processor mated with 1GB of RAM and an Adreno 306 GPU. The processor and GPU pairing didn’t really blow us away in its benchmark results, though it managed to keep everything nice and smooth while we were using the device. Gaming with the Grand Prime Duos was relatively good, there were some skipped frames in Real Racing 3 but nothing too frustrating.

Unfortunately, you’re not going to see any real increase in performance even though the processor is 64-bit ready. You’ll have to wait until Android 5.0 Lollipop to see a discernable increase in performance because of the 64-bit chip, and even then developers will have to write new apps to take advantage of the new architecture. So in short, having a 64-bit processor isn’t going to dramatically increase the performance of the Grand Duos.

Decent performance out of the camera but struggles in low-light

We took the Grand Prime Duos with us while we were sightseeing in Beijing a few weeks back and we were pleased to find out that the Grand Prime Duos managed to get rather decent shots of Tienanmen Square while we were there.

Unfortunately, the camera struggled with low-light, as evidenced by some of our shots inside a modern art gallery the night before.

Really good battery life

If there’s something we’ve learned from reviewing so many smartphones, it’s that Qualcomm Snapdragon powered ones usually boast incredible battery life even with moderate mAh numbers. The Grand Prime Duos, with a rather impressive one day and four hours of battery life. You can extend that even further by using Samsung’s battery saving mode via the TouchWiz UI.

Verdict: a good mid-range smartphone with rather decent performance and excellent battery life

The Samsung Galaxy Prime Duos may not be the prettiest mid-range smartphone to ever grace the Unbox labs, but it has it where it counts. Good camera, good performance and excellent battery life means that the Grand Prime Duos is a mid-ranger that you can’t ignore.