Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime hands-on

Having a global best-seller is nice, but for a company that makes as many devices as Samsung, targeting different regions with different phones makes a lot of sense. The Samsung Galaxy Prime has modest display specs, while keeping the rest on proper mid-range levels. There’s a dual-SIM option in certain regions.

It’s questionable whether it will garner a lot of popularity in the developed western markets, but such phones are selling like hotcakes in the rest of the world.

“Galaxy” is all that needs to be said about the design. The body is slender for the price class, 8.6mm thin, even if the phone isn’t small (144.8 x 72.1mm) or light (156g) for a 5″ device.

The Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime does not deviate from the Galaxy look

The back is made of a semi-glossy plastic that handles fingerprints decently well, but there is nothing masculine about its pear-like finish, glistening under light. It’s enough to say that the white version does not use our favorite material. Samsung HQ thinks otherwise, since the material is basically the same as what goes on the back of the Galaxy A3 or the Galaxy Core Prime.

Coming back around to the front, the screen is good in size but qHD resolution (540 x 960) is a bit of a stretch on 5 inches. It’s a TFT display, but viewing angles are actually quite good. The display is dim and colors are a bit dull (it could be that our eyes have adjusted to Samsung’s usual Super AMOLED).

Sharpness is the biggest issue – the difference between the Galaxy Grand Prime screen and an HD screen is visible. It doesn’t harm functionality in any way (if anything it’s a boon for the Adreno 306 GPU) and depending on your eyesight and pickiness the 220ppi may be a non-issue.

Above the screen is a 5MP camera that shoots 1080p video. The camera has an 85° wide-angle lens and Samsung markets the Galaxy Grand Prime as a selfie phone. Software features include Beauty face and animated GIF.

The camera on the back takes 8MP stills and records 1080p video, it has a single-LED flash and additional shooting modes.

Solidly build phone with accessible battery and card slots

The phone itself is all plastic, but feels very sturdy. We actually had to double-check that the frame’s rim is not metal (it’s not).

The chipset is a Snapdragon 410 with a quad-core Cortex-A53 (@ 1.2GHz) and Adreno 306 (same performance as the 305, but more energy efficient). Android 4.4 KitKat runs smoothly, even with TouchWiz on top.

Expect the full review soon – the Galaxy Grand Prime commands massive interest among our readers and we’re eager to see if it lives up to those expectations.