Samsung Champ Duos GT-E2652 – OG Review

Samsung has taken the touchscreen phones below Rs 5000 levels and Champ Duos is another attempt to lure the low end market with a touchscreen. The Micromax and Lavas of the mobile world have been milking this segment since sometime and it seems that Samsung has played really smart this time. A dual-sim touchscreen device retailing below Rs 5000 is a great deal.

Samsung has a brand name that assures quality and then this is perhaps different than many other low cost phones out there, primary reasons being a CE certification (radiation does matter) and better customer support than most other low cost players. The icing on the cake is the Dual SIM support on the Champ Duos (GT-E2652XKANINU). Lets take a look at this little one:

As it seems the ChampDuos isn’t targeted as a music phone (unlike the original Champ C3303). Its a low cost Dual SIM and the Here is a quick look at the features:

• 2.6″ touchscreen (resistive)
• 1.3MP Camera
• 1000 mAh battery
• Bluetooth 2.1
• MicroSD expansion
• Tri-band Network Support

The Duos is a little different from the original Champ, but largely the same feature set. The same old 1.3MP camera, 1000 mAh battery, MicroSD & Bluetooth 2.1. The very first difference in the looks is the buttons is on the front. The plastic buttons have been replaced by a metal layer with 3 buttons on it (Motorola Razr style). The additional speaker on the front disappears and the earpiece is not a metal grill (which also acts as the sole loudspeaker now).

The Samsung Champ C3303

The 2.6″ screen is a little bigger than the original champ, on first looks, we weren’t able to make that out. But we do notice that the front of the device has flatten up, as compared to the display on the original Champ that was pressed below the corners. As a standalone piece, the Champ Duos has got a minor facelift in design.

The Champ is a little longer and broader than the original champ. The height gets a healthy 3mm bump and the width gets a relatively less 1.6mm bump. This might have been to accommodate the larger screen and/or the Dual SIM functionality. Another addition is a button on the bottom right side. This would have been a dedicated camera button on a regular smartphone, on the Champ Duos its a SIM toggle. The SIM card toggle allows you to select which SIM is currently active / switch between the SIM’s inserted.

An interesting observation on the Champ Duos is the fact that you can hot-swap the second SIM in the device (i.e. change it without removing the battery). However it doesn’t function like that. You need to reboot the device to register a new SIM when inserted (and the device automatically reboots if you remove the SIM in use/ another instance when the device crashed was when using the Twitter app). This raised hopes of a hot-swappable Dual SIM function, but disappointed us. A dealbreaker? No!

You may be aware, but here it is again. Like most Dual SIM phones, the Champ Duos supports only one SIM at a time. So if you have an incoming / ongoing call on one line, the other one would be not reachable. Didn’t we tell you its a dumb phone (non smartphone)? On a separate note, we wonder why there aren’t any good high end smartphones that support Dual SIM.

On the software/performance/camera front we find the Champ Duos to be pretty similar to the original Champ. The onscreen keyboard remains the same T9, sluggish touchscreen (resistive) and the only change perhaps is the native FB / Twitter apps. Not a very polished app, but basic apps that do the job. The device crashed on us twice in the first 30 mins of usage, once during hot swapping SIM and trying to use the phone and the second time when loading our twitter mentions.

Jump over to our Champ review (video and writeup) to look at the interface and functioning. Most of the things are common.

Conclusion:

We find it hard to recommend the Samsung Champ Duos E2652. Partly disappointed by the crashing and poor touchscreen, we also miss WiFi and better Dual SIM support here (as I type this, it rebooted for the third time, the twitter app is buggy!). Yes native apps have been added, but they aren’t any good. The Facebook app doesn’t accept your Facebook ID, but need you to enter the entire email id. On this poor onscreen keyboard, thats a lot of extra work to do.

I would happily pay an additional Rs 500 / 1000 and expect the device to give me a WiFi connection with a better touchscrren. But clearly Samsung’s problem is more than just hardware here. The software bit isn’t polished enough and asking one to use a stylus in 2011 isn’t the way to go.