Samsung Galaxy S Duos review: S goes Dual

Introduction

Dual-SIM users generally fall in one of two categories - those on a tight budget who look to optimize spending by combining carrier plans, and frequent travelers, who don't want to carry two handsets all the time.

Samsung Galaxy S Duos S7562 official images

Top-tier manufacturers have been trying to wrestle away the first group from white-box makers for a few years now, but only recently have they started to pay attention to the second one. Smartphones are only now starting to emerge that have a decent spec sheet to go with the extra SIM slot. Looking to avoid astronomical charges for data traffic in roaming does not necessarily mean that you want the cheapest device possible.

Enter the Samsung Galaxy S Duos S7562 - the smartphone that aims to deliver a solid smartphone experience, while juggling calls between a couple of SIMs. As usual we'll kickoff this review with a quick rundown of the smartphone's key strengths and most notable weaknesses.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA support
• Dual Mini-SIM slots
• 4" 16M-color TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen 480x800 pixels resolution
• 1 GHz ARM Cortex A5 processor, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm MSM7227A chipset; 768MB of RAM available to the user
• Android OS v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) with TouchWiz 4.0 UI customization
• 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash; geotagging, smile detection
• Front-facing VGA camera
• 4 GB of internal storage, microSD slot
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity; Digital compass
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• FM radio with RDS
• Document editor
• File manager preinstalled
• Samsung Apps brings a few nice apps for free
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor

Main disadvantages

• Video recording maxes out at VGA@30fps
• No shutter key
• No ambient light sensor
• No DivX/Xvid video support out of the box
• Retail package is as basic as it gets

The lists above might seem familiar and that's no accident. The Samsung Galaxy S Duos S7562 is merely a Galaxy Ace Plus with a larger screen, getting a lift from a pinch of Galaxy S III styling. There's no need to reinvent the wheel to create a mid-range device - Samsung are sticking to what's proven to work.

Samsung Galaxy S Duos live photos

The Galaxy Note (and more recently the Galaxy Note II) helped the world's biggest smartphone manufacturer discover and claim lots of new ground for itself in the high-end, and the company is undoubtedly trying to achieve something similar in the midrange with devices like the Galaxy S Duos. We'll know to what success by the time this review is complete, so let's waste no more time.

The unboxing and hardware inspection follow right after the break.