Dual-SIM Android coming to town – Gigabyte GSmart G1355 gets in front of our camera

Android is solidifying itself as the most versatile smartphone OS of all times. It ships into all sorts of form factors, display sizes, price ranges and as of lately, there’s even a dual-SIM variety.

We give you the Gigabyte GSmart G1355 – a dual-SIM smartphone with the very attracting $285 price tag contract-free.

The highlight of the recently announced GSmart G1355 are its dual-SIM capabilities. It gives users seamless two cards operation – you can receive and make calls with both SIMs at any given moment and the same goes for messaging. Before sending a text or commencing a call you’re prompted to choose which SIM you want to use.

In the SIM manager menu you can give different names to your SIM cards, select the default one for calling, data connection and change the APN. The only drawback is that the GSmart G1355 doesn’t offer a hot-swappable SIM slot on the side and you’ll have to remove the battery in order to change SIMs.

Perhaps the main attraction of the G1355 is the large 4.3″ no-spoils display of WVGA resolution. It’s a relatively good quality display with nice and wide viewing angles but less than stellar sunlight legibility due to the high surface reflectivity.

The GSmart G1355 runs on an 800 MHz single-core Snapdragon processor, which may be something of a letdown for some. The Android transition effects are not particularly snappy, but that may as well be a software setting since we didn’t notice any particular lag or hold-ups in day-to-day usage.

There’s a 5 MP camera with a single LED flash on the back of the GSmart G1355 – read further for samples.

The GSmart G1355

The GSmart G1355 is a robust device weighing the hefty 168 g but it stays relatively thin at just 11.5 mm. It does feel somewhat thick but it’s nothing that much worse than say… an LG Optimus 2X. Speaking of LG, the GSmart’s back panel offers the same rubbery-feel plastic we enjoyed on the Optimus 2X and 3D.

One quarrel we have with the G1355 is that being as big it makes us wander why get a super-sized droid to fill your two SIM needs when it’s about as big as two dual-SIM X2-02′s.

The GSmart G1355

We’ve prepped some camera samples made with the GSmart G1355. They’re not anything special, in fact they are terrible. The focus is all wrong and we found the camera to be very slow, taking about 4-5 seconds to snap a photo, which led to rolling shutter effects. Our unit is a pre-production device so we’re not too surprised.

Gigabyte GSmart G1355 samples

The resolution chart shows that despite being a 5 MP unit, the camera didn’t produce satisfactory detail to fill the entire shot. In the second chart the GSmart had problems choosing the right ISO setting but finally got around to producing an okay result.

Posters

This device is clearly not meant as a cameraphone, which is fine considering its price tag and given features. It’s okay for the occasional shot but not if you want to leave your gidicam at home.

We’ve prepared a set of synthetic benchmarks of the GSmart G1355 and compared it to the Galaxy Ace Plus. It offers an 800 MHz single-core Qualcomm MSM7227T processor and 512 MB of RAM, and is running Android Gingerbread 2.3.4. Now the GSmart is no speed demon and is easily dealt with by the Samsung Ace Plus, which sports a single-core processor too.

The first – BenchmarkPi – translates into how fast the processor will perform.

In AnTuTu the story continues on the same path – Ace Plus the clear victor.

Quadrant is among the most popular benchmarks out there. Here the GSmart performs well worse than phones like the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 – and that’s saying a lot (or very little, depending on the view).

While using the device we saw its processor struggling especially with the 16 GB microSD card preloaded with pictures. It took forever to load the first 60 photos (5MP) off the memory card so in the end we gave up on waiting.

CPU-hungry tasks aside, the GSmart G1355 performs well, but once you get to an app that features heavy graphics or high-quality multimedia content, the phone would stutter.

We didn’t do a complete test of the battery, but with both cards operational on stand-by the Gigabyte had to be recharged daily. It sometimes warned of almost depleted battery after just a couple of hours after we took the charger out. We guess this could be due to a software issue or due to the pre-release status of the device we have.

Overall, the Gigabyte GSmart G1355 is a nice entry-level smartphone. With a $280 commitment-free price you really can’t go wrong with these specs.