Samsung launches 5.25-inch midrange Galaxy Grand 2
Samsung has unveiled its mid-range dual-SIM Galaxy Grand 2 phablet, which offers a better HD display and more powerful processor than its predecessor.
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As Nokia plays catch up on Samsung's phablet turf, the South Korean company has launched its second Galaxy Grand, a Galaxy Note-sized smartphone for buyers on a tighter budget.
Samsung has boosted the bare minimum display of the first Grand, giving the Grand 2 a 5.25-inch HD display with 1280x720 resolution that puts it on par with last year's standard for higher-end smartphones.
The new Grand still runs on a 1.2Ghz processor, but has moved from dual to quad core. It also has an improved 2,600mAh battery, which Samsung cliams will offer 10 hours of video playback and 17 hours of calls.
Some of the specs on the newer Grand remain the same as its predecessor, such as the dual-SIM, popular in markets such as India, and 8GB internal memory with microSD that supports up to 64GB additional space. It's also kept the eight-megapixel camera, but Samsung has bumped up the RAM from 1GB to 1.5GB in the new edition Grand.
Likewise, the Grand 2 will ship with Android Jelly Bean. However, it's the newer 4.3 version compared with the 4.1.2 on the original Grand, and comes with Samsung's apps such as ChatON, Samsung Hub, S Health, Group Play, S Travel, S Translator, Samsung Link, and Story Album.
The Grand 2 is available in white, black and pink and may find a challenger in Nokia's recently announced phablet, the six-inch Lumia 1320, which size-wise sits between Samsung's Grand 2 and its 6.3-inch display Galaxy Mega.
The Lumia 1320 is lower-specced sibling of the Lumia 1520, which arrives in some markets in Europe this week for around €700.
Nokia has yet to release pricing details for the Lumia 1320, which has similar specs to the Grand 2 on some fronts, though the Nokia device is outdone on others. The Lumia 1320 for example comes with a five-megapixel camera and is slightly less powerful, running on a dual-core 1.7GHz processor with 1GB RAM.
Similar to the Grand 2, the Lumia 1320 has a display resolution of 1280x720 with a pixel density of 245 ppi and comes with 8GB onboard memory, and an SD card slot that supports up to 64GB storage. Of course, Lumia devices come with 7GB additional SkyDrive storage and Office apps.
With a larger display, the Lumia 1320 also weighs a hefty 220 grams compared with the Grand 2's 163 grams, although Nokia has packed it with a 3400 mAh battery and promises 25 hours talk time and 9 hours of playback time. Also, rather than Samsung's dual-SIM, which Nokia has employed in some of its Asha feature phones, the Lumia 1320 relies on a micro SIM and supports some LTE bands.