Samsung Galaxy S Duos S7562 Review

Samsung Galaxy S Duos S7562 Review: Dual SIM 3G Android Budget Smartphone

Galaxy S Duos S7562 is a first mid range Android smartphone with Dual SIM. It has a appearance of Galaxy S3 and the hardware of Galaxy S and Dual SIM. 4 inch screen, 1 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM and 5 MP Camera are some of the notable features of Galaxy S Duos. It is Galaxy S1 with Dual SIM and LED Flash minus AMOLED Display.

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Design and Appearance

At first look, your eyes may get mistaken for calling it Galaxy S3. I posted a photo on Facebook and asked our fans to guess the name and to my surprise 60+ % of people commented that it is S3. It has a pebble shape and full plastic body and little bit heavier in weight than S3 and even Galaxy S.

Four inch screen isn’t edge to edge and the home button is similar to other Galaxy series phones. Thickness is exactly as the Galaxy S i9000.

Display

TFT Capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 480×800 gives a superfine display. In sunlight however, it went completely dark at mid level brightness and somewhat readable in full brightness. It lacks Auto Brightness.

Interface

Galaxy S duos boasts the traditional but nice TouchWiz UI. It is easy to manage apps, create folder and navigate. I wont talk much about this because you can always install beautiful custom Android Launchers and get features that you want.

Applications

Not always does Samsung inserts bloatware on phone. On Galaxy S Duos, I found some really useful pre-installed apps. Calendar which is now called S Planner, Handy, My movies, My Music, Chat On and Samsung App Store of course.

Handy and My Movies are the most noticeable apps and useful among the list. Handy is for booking movie, train, bus and aeroplane tickets along with support for Stock investments. While My Movies lets you watch full length movies. Yes, full movie streaming without any subscription completely free.

Google Play store is always open with millions of apps to choose from.

Camera / Photo / Image Capture Quality

Rear Camera is 5 MegaPixel with LED Flash which captures 2560×1920 px photos. It has Auto Focus means you cannot touch focus but the outcome is fairly good. I compared it with the photo quality of Galaxy S i9000 which has same 5MP camera and almost similar hardware configuration.

In dim light or window sunlight room, Galaxy S Duos doesn’t capture well without Flash. And when Flash is switched ON, somewhat unnatural photo is captured. Also, colors aren’t so well recognized in absence of bright light.

In sunlight too, the colors are somewhat dull and photo has noise.

At night or while capturing objects in dark, LED flash is powerful and reaches a distance at least 4-6 feet easily. Quality of night photos can be said just fine.

Click on the samples to view the enlarged original size of image

Video Recording

Galaxy S Duos S7562 doesn’t support HD Videos capturing but VGA at 30 FPS. Resolution of videos captured is 640×480 in MP4 format. In bright light, quality of videos is fair and you canuse LED Flash while video recording too during shooting in dark.

To be honest, Videos aren’t really appreciable.

Audio and Video Playback

Popular Audio and video formats even MKV are playable. It has one speaker at rear besides Camera which should be enough for individual listening. Headphone sound quality isn’t something to talk about.

Though, it doesn’t record HD videos but can playback full HD videos. 720p videos played smoothly while problem came when I tried 1080i videos. I tried Hardware acceleration on MX Player but still there were lags in playback. Still, the good thing is its compatibility with various video formats. If default player gives error, download MX Player.

Dual SIM Management

Galaxy S Duos S7562 is a GSM+GSM Dual SIM Dual Active Smartphone. One of a kind in this range and that too with 3G support. It can be called as the USP or X Factor of this phone, reason behind its sale.

Switching Network, Enabling or Disabling is seamless. Samsung has taken care to add this feature in notification bar itself. Dual Active feature is called as Smart Dual SIM and can be enabled optionally. Whenever one SIM is busy, we can receive call from another and the person calling will get “Waiting” tone instead of “Switch off” which happens with most of the Dual SIM Phones.

I didn’t face any issue while using this feature. And they have given option to name your SIM and icon too for easy recognition.

3G and Video Call

3G services can be accessed from any one of the SIM Network at a time. You can choose the SIM from which Data Service has to be received from “SIM Manager” in settings.

Front Camera is VGA and it is just fine for video callings. I didn’t try 3G video call but on Skype, it was fine.

Performance

With 1 GHz processor and 512 MB RAM memory, Android ICS 4.0.4 runs smooth. Multitasking was seamless. I didn’t try heavy graphics games but Contra for Android and Fruit Ninja worked fine. Still, I think it should be capable for running most of the games as hardware power is enough to cope up the load.

Check out the Quadrant score comparison of Galaxy S1 and Galaxy S Duos

Battery Life

Galaxy S Duos has 1500 mAh Battery. You may feel that being a Dual SIM Android phone with 3G and 4 inch display, it won’t last long but that’s not completely true. It lasted for more than 12 hours for me with activities including 3G, Display most of time was ON as I was testing, video playback and streaming around 45 minutes and few calls of just 20 minutes.

Being Android user from last 3 years I admit that smartphones don’t offer a 2 day long battery but you can still improve it to last at least for a day. Here’s everything to know about increasing Android Battery backup and Calibration.

Conclusion

Before drawing out any conclusion, let me tell you that I bought it at a price of Rs. 15,700 from retail outlet. And I would say that it is the best and value for money phone in the market with Dual SIM functionality at the moment. If you are looking for Dual SIM active phone within 15-18K price range with standard features, Galaxy S Duos is worth every penny spent.

4 / 5 stars