There were a lot of shiny new Marble White Samsung devices on display at Mobile World Congress this year: the Samsung Galaxy Fame, Galaxy Young and Galaxy Note 8.0 to name but three, but one other key addition to the company’s 2013 lineup came in the form of the Samsung Galaxy Grand.
The Galaxy Grand looks like an S3 and feels like an S3 on the surface, but utilises significantly different hardware under the hood. On the front sits a large 5-inch display, with WVGA (480×800) resolution which doesn’t by any means look cheap, but also doesn’t exude the same premium feel as the flagship which it emulates due to the lack of HD on offer. Aside from the larger screen and body to match, the layout of the hardware controls and capacitive keys is almost identical, right down to the placement of the LED flash and loudspeaker grille on the phone’s back, either side of its 8-megapixel camera.
The user experience is also very S3-esq with a responsive UI which takes the form of the company’s own TouchWiz Nature UX running atop Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean. Indeed the specs also accommodate Full HD video recording and playback as well as 3D gaming without trouble however unlike the 1.5GHz quad-core employed by the S3, the Galaxy Grand opts for a more conservative 1.2GHz dual-core processor.
In short the specs paired with the size of the Galaxy Grand mean that it serves as the homogenisation of both Galaxy S3 and Note 2, but with a lower price point (reflected by the lesser hardware). The handset also comes in a dualSIM variety known as the Samsung Galaxy Grand Duos which may or may not grace the UK, but might better help justify the usefulness of this unusual handset.
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