Bought this phone on 31st December 2012. A friend recommended this phone to me. It was my first smartphone and the first which I got from my own salary. I got it for 16 grands and spent an extra 1 grand for mobile accessories.
Key features of the phone:
1 GHz Cortex-A5 Processor
4-inch HD Display (Touchscreen: Capacity)
5 MP Primary Camera
Android v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) OS
Dual SIM (GSM + GSM)
0.3 MP front facing camera
Micro SD slot on the left(outside)
4 GB Internal Storage
32 GB expandable memory
Pros:
The phone is very good for the average user.
Camera Quality is decent with LED flash.
It has a front camera of 1.3 megapixels which is really good during day time unlike the VGA camera. During night it works OK !!!
Its looks very stylish.
The 4 inch TFT Capacitative Touchscreen by Samsung is highly responsive and clear to behold.
Sound quality is really very nice.
It emits clear sound through speaker.
Headphones are of great quality with a single button for pause, previous and next.
The biggest advantage of the phone is the compatibility to use two GSM SIM cards.
It’s the best phone if you are looking for dual SIM feature. It has a smart dual SIM feature because of which you can receive calls from both SIM cards even during calls. It also gives you the option of selecting SIM cards for Data service network.
The drop-down on top of the home-screen gives some useful shortcuts such as you can activate Wi-Fi, GPS, screen rotation feature, blocking mode, silent mode or vibrate mode or general mode, data network, Bluetooth, driving mode and synchronization mode. It also gives you the option to switch between two SIM cards and manage the brightness level. You can also see the battery percentage beside the battery symbol.
While playing music, you can still open the camera and if you want to off the CAM sound you should keep your mobile on vibrating or silent mode. It supports WiFi Connectivity so that you can always stay connected from home or from the office. The phone also comes with an FM Radio. It also supports Wi-Fi hotspot. It enables you to play games which require high quality graphics. It supports 640*480 HD video recording. The music player supports MP3, WAV, EAAC, MIDI formats. The video formats supported by this phone are H.264, H.263, MPEG4. There are some cool widgets that you can get in this phone.
Cons: Let me tell you if you are a hardcore gamer then this product is not for you. It lags a lot. It often gets hang while playing games. It all depends on the number of applications you have installed on your phone. It provides you with 645 MB RAM, so you have to adjust your applications depending on the RAM capacity. It claims to have a camera quality of 5 megapixels but if you compare it with a Sony phone having a quality of 3.2 mp, Sony beats this one. The biggest drawback with this phone is its battery power. No doubt if you are surfing the web and continuously playing games, it gonna eat up the battery but still on this phone, I would consider this as drawback.
Samsung claims to give an internal memory of 4 GB but you get only 1.3 GB on your device, which is really less. Once your internal memory is full, the phone starts hanging, becomes slow and makes you feel frustrated. It slows up everything. The worst part comes when it slows up your contacts tab. Right from opening the keypad, dialing a number, make a call, end the call, searching numbers etc., everything becomes slow. You have to be careful with the number of apps you are installing on your phone. Another irritating part is you have to always clear the RAM, so that the phone works with decent speed. When you want to apply a particular wallpaper on desktop, it gives you a sizing scheme which is very annoying. This becomes more irritating when you want to select a profile pic for whats app and other apps.
When I took the phone, for few days it went well, but after a month there was some problem with the play store. I was not able to download anything from play store. I had to go to Samsung care and update the software. And after that, it started working. So I would say that, if you are an average user, go for this one.