Hands On Preview: Samsung Galaxy Grand

Not long after getting our hands on the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini, we were given the newly announced Samsung Galaxy Grand (Which we saw at the Samsung Forum in Jakarta a few weeks back) to play around with. At first glance, there was little to like about the Galaxy Grand, relegating itself to becoming another phase in flood of android phones in the market. Once you fire it up, the 5inch screen coupled with the 480×800 resolution is a puzzling one to say the least. The huge buttons and font makes anybody who has used a high resolution screen cringe. On top of that, what’s with the dual sim? Isn’t that a feature relegated to cheap China phones and lower end handsets?

But then, it dawned on us. This may just be one of Samsung’s best positioned phones so far. The old saying a room full of chimps can write the complete works of Shakespeare given an infinite amount of time may just ring true here. This phone could possibly be Samsung’s Macbeth.

Preview continues after the jump

How can a RM1,200 phone with terrible resolution by today’s standards be anything close to being a device that is even close to being worth considering? Sometimes, with all the phones we see we have to take a step back and remind ourselves that not every phone is meant for our demographic. Imagine, your parents (or an uncle/aunt) want to get into the whole smartphone game; Why not save some money and get a device with features that they will use and won’t be overkill? Sure you can get a Note 2, but that’s nearly double the price. The Grand’s “low resolution” TFT display mirrors the font size of my mother’s iPhone 5 after she changed it to see better (sorry ma). If you tell her about the merits of retina display, it really won’t matter because she’s trying to make everything bigger anyway!

The Galaxy Grand is also large enough not to lose as well as fast enough not to frustrate anyone. This is a very interesting device and for this, we may just have a different way of reviewing than we are used to. Since this is a preview, we’ll leave you with a few pictures and sample shots from the camera. Look out for the full review coming out in a week or so after we’ve had our time with it.

Camera Samples