Guess by now you must have fed on all the info you needed if you were longing to know the first among the two Samsung dual sim phones donning Android. I had a quick walk-through of the specs and appearance with a nice gallery of images of the phone, that’s in-case you need a refresher what this phones has in its bag. I have had this phone for more than two weeks now, using it on a day-to-day basis, and it didnt disappoint. The reason this phone was launched was to provide the dual-sim users with an Android option that they would trust to take them on a full-time basis giving them value. Let me go straight to what makes this phone tick.
The dual sim dual standby
Ofcourse, this is why this phone is here in the first place, so makes sense to start with what you get off the dual sim feature. The sim slots are behind the bettery, no hot swapping here, only available for the memory card. But once you have the phone on, you get the sim card manager as the first option in the phone settings.
Sim Manager allows you to:
- Select the sim card to use for data. You cannot use data on both sims at the same time(does it even make sense?) so you select which sim card will be for data use. Great if a carrier has good voice offers and another has good data offers. Power to the subscriber!
- Select icons to represent whichever sim. There are five icons, Sim 1, Sim 2, home, office and heart. Gives you ideas, maybe one sim card is just for family, its easy to identify them in the notification icon when you pull it down for selecting.
- Register name. You can rename the SIM cards.
- Also allows you to choose whether you want the data line to also receive calls while live. Nice option since if you disable this option that line will only be used for data, so no disconnections during calls. There is a shortcut of the same on the notifications pull down menu where you can tap to select the active sim card to call from.
Android 2.3.6
This is a good feature as its just recently that Android devices came with Android Gingerbread, the bulk of them come on Android 2.2 Froyo and below. Gives users a better user interface and faster experience.
Qwerty and type
This is the differentiator between Galaxy Y Pro Duos and Galaxy Y Duos, the latter is full touch, giving users an option to select if they are the qwerty guys or love full touch. Galaxy Y Pro Duos has the best of both, giving qwerty and type. Qwerty is associated with email and document editing for fast typing on the physical qwerty buttons. This phone has nice well laid out buttons, with the usual shortcuts to enable fast activity. The dial application is operated via touch but is also accessible via the optical track-pad. Plus if you lock it with the usual screen lock you will still need to unlock via touch.
Added below there as an easy scroll is the optical track-pad, to make it easier to scroll the menus up, down, left and centre.
Display
The 2.6″ display could be termed as one of the disadvantages of the phone, its convenient foe most applications, but to some it proves a headache to use. For example if you try the pull to refresh feature on twitter and other apps you will find some restrictions as to how fast and easy you are able to achieve that due to the tiny screen size. Other than that, the 320 by 240 pixels display is sharp for an entry level device.
Camera
The 3.15 mp camera is just right for the phone, produces surprisingly good images at good lighting. Ofcourse you have nothing to show of it when it comes to low lit places since it’s a fixed focus, no flash camera. Surprise surprise! It has a front camera for video calls, you dont get that on budget phones.
Data and speed
With the 7.2MBps HSDPA you got a good device right there, that is fast data for most networks. In most places you wont get the 21MBps speeds, but you can get a promise of 3-7Mbps, this device will make sure you enjoy that. coupled with the 832Mhz processor and 512MB RAM. For the screen size of Galaxy Y Pro Duos size, the graphics wont slow the device down, so that RAM and processing power works just well.
You also get the ability to use Wi-Fi where there is one available. Tethering phone data is also an option factored in the device, so it is also handy for those days when you don’t have a fixed connection or a modem. Bluetooth version 3.0 and USB 2.0 are also factored in
Storage
The 160mb user memory is barely enough, but most of these phones compromise storage for pricing to make it affordable. However it comes bundled with a 2GB memory card, and you are at liberty to increase this to 32GB via microSD.
Battery life
The 1350mh battery life ensures that you are connected for an average of two days on optimal use. The small screen size comes to play here, reducing the power needs, even with the dual sim standby feature and the sharp graphics screen, the phone stands the test of time delivering to the optimal user.
Bottomline
This phone is good for the budget spender as you will get the qwerty and touch feature on a dual sim standby phone. That combination is a first in the smartphone world. So you can handle mail or office calls on one sim and social or home on another sim in the same phone. Saves you alot on hardware costs incase you would have preferred such an arrangement. The small qwerty form factor makes it easy to use and hold in the hand, giving the light 112grams in the pocket feel at the same time. The TouchWiz UI is abit unique on this phone, with the appdrawer on the side as opposed to the usual bottom, an idea I assume meant for utilizing the limited space on the 2.6 inch screen.
On the flip side, if you are a person who loves reading on a phone you may be frustrated by the screen size, giving the small font making you require to squint at some point. This is also a disadvantage when you are trying to refresh some apps as I stated earlier in this post. The pros on the phone gives are enough for one to overlook those, I personally like this phone and understand why it has been the most searched on this blog and possibly in the blogs for quite some time. The retail shops sing of a similar situation, with stock running out, according to several shops I made contact with.
