Home > Materials > Test and Reviews > Samsung D780 DuoS mobile phone review

Product Reviews - Digital Trends Analysis

Mobile phones reviews

Mobile phones tests

As it was promised by Samsung the first phone with two SIM cards called D880 DuoS is getting its logical sequel. This is a bar type “brick” Samsung D780 DuoS which has a good functional and the price is more suitable in comparison with its slider predecessor, well it was promised by the Company. Let us see what did Korean guys put in this novelty and how much does it differ from the first model.

Appearance
Samsung D780 DuoS cannot be called a compact phone.

It should have been much thinner and more compact for that. And here we have…quite different thing. When the phone is in your pants pocket it is visibly bristling. This is not good and I will not be original to say that first DuoS was much more attractive.




It is not the matter of taste, just D880 (in the left) looks like a solid slider and the hero of our review today looks like a budget bar type phone. This is what makes it similar with Fly B700 an inexpensive Chinese dual SIM device.



Well, it has a good solid body; solid in the way it looks like and tested by practical using after two falls to gravel. By the way there is a mounting of grooved plastic on the back part of the body to avoid slipping out of your hand. It did not help in my occasion and the phone fell down to the run-down road. Probably, they should use soft-touch plastic for the whole back cover of the phone – it looks better and device lies better in your hand.
 


Keyboard and display
Here we see the traditional for bar type devices placement of control elements. Two soft keys take place in both sides from a 4 position control key.




The last one is a bit uplifted over the surface that is why it can be considered to be tactile and convenient in use. The confirmation “OK” key has backlights, let alone some contemporary phones.



Type keyboard does not look good (it is too boring) and the keys size are not always good for quick typing. This does not mean that they are not convenient, just the distance between them is such that it takes you to be accurate in order not to make mistakes.



The backlights are milky-white, bright and all indications are clearly seen in the darkness.

This model is well known after other Samsung devices and there is nothing new that could be found there. The color rendition is natural with slight distortion.



You can freely download your favorite pictures and enjoy them…or to put some pictures as wallpaper because there are not so many of preinstalled and stored in phone.






The image is bleaching under the bright sun beams of May but indications are seen well. For example the message text and menu signatures are seen clearly. You will hardly see anything in the camera viewfinder mode if the sun beams fall to the screen; you will have to cover display with your hand or to use keyframing function. In any case there are enough of display abilities for those tasks which you can solve with help of D780.
The menu is also remained the same from previous models, for example first DuoS that is why there is nothing about it.




Three color schemes (D880 has got four), calendar view on the desk top, effect choice at looking through menu, text style and view settings, floating menu on/off. In one word – everything is standard.










Functions
The phone abilities are the same, you can read about it in review of a previous slider, but as for D780 is not a slider the settings concerning this mechanism are excluded. If anyone will ask you what is more convenient to use – a slider or a bar type phone – I will answer that it is a matter of taste, but due to the fact that both phones are rather big and there is almost no dimension advantage of D780 in comparison with first slider, then I am choosing first DuoS.
We wrote about the work of two SIM cards before and we should say that there are no changes concerning this in this novelty (we had a test non-commercial sample). On the left end we see a special key to control SIM cards which is duplicated in menu. Number or SMS typing, then the choice of necessary SIM card and that is all.






And is it was proved by previous model this DuoS held 4 incoming calls (at two lines) simultaneously and the owner had only to shift between its interlocutors. Everything is working fine except one drawback – at an incoming call to the second line or second SIM card the phone does not indicate that with any sound but with a phone number on the screen. I think that this glitch will be corrected by designers in near time, what for – it does not need any comments.
By the way, you still cannot appoint individual type of signal for each SIM card on incoming SMS messages, there is no such problem with voice calls.




By the way the preinstalled melodies are good and you can wait for a couple of days before downloading your favorite ringtones.




Incoming calls volume is enough to hear this device from your pocket in a not a very noisy street, and you cannot hope for a vibro call due to its extreme intelligence.
Memo book is divided into three parts: two SIM cards and the phone memory. The view of all numbers in one list is also possible as well as in separate cards (this function did not work in our sample).




If you are looking through a whole list of contacts then you can see a small icon near each contact informing you on the place of storage. Dialing of necessary number is able from any of SIM cards; just you have to choose a necessary card with special key on the side end of the phone and press dial key.

Camera and player
We could suppose that this phone has a 3 megapixel camera as well as its predecessor.



But 1 megapixel was lost due to the lower price of the phone. In the result we have 2 megapixels and no auto focus function and at that we get pictures of satisfactory quality. You can see the way the camera interface looks like, it is just the same as the previous model had.








The settings remain the same as well, but in fact it is the same camera. I will rather add that even in the even daylight the pictures were smudged a little if you are viewing them via notebook screen but not a phone. As for the rest – the camera is typical medium level.

You can see the test pictures here and an archive with full size pictures.










Media
The player is painfully familiar and its sound too. To be more exact I shall say that when you use good earphones you obviously here too much of upper frequencies which you can exclude with Rock equalizer if necessary for example or if you use inlay earphones Koss, which tend to some kind of constrained sound. And we are talking seriously – D780 sounds quite good for the non-music device and we will not compare it with iPod… The volume is high, there are 4 preinstalled equalizers (you cannot create your own), 3D sound mode, modes of tracks shuffle and repeat, support of several playlists.








Of course D780 would be better with 3,5 mm jack for earphones, but this is a fortune of music models and smartphones of “G” and “I” series; their players are naturally good!

Inbuilt FM receiver can be called sensitive, because it rarely missed stations in auto search mode (do not miss with auto setting) excluding only stations with weak signal. The memory can store 23 stations and this number does not seem too big for a megalopolis FM range.




In fact plus to listening to the radio via earphones you can turn on a loudspeaker or to make radio play in background mode.

Usefulnesses and other gismos
Some applications are put in the same name folder; icons of other icons are place in the main menu. For example: alarms (there are 5 of them), calendar, MP3 player and radio are stored exactly there.
Dictaphone limits the time of record for one hour even if the file will be stored to the memory card. The record quality is medium, there are no settings for it, but this is not so bad. It is a pity that you cannot record a conversation which should be really expected from a contemporary phone.




The games are partially of the first DuoS (you can read in appropriate review about them), among added there are: moto races, tetris and puzzle for blondes – Paris Hilton Diamond Quest.






Among typical applications that flow from one phone to another we have a calendar, world time map, notes editor (up to 1000 letters), event reminder, calculator, currency and measures converter and stopwatch. Nothing new or special about this novelty to my mind.



This device perfectly recognized 2Gb cards and sent files via Bluetooth with 45 Kb/s speed and as for all communications it really behaved. The time of battery life with two active SIM cards is 2,5 days at 25 minutes of conversations a day, sending about 7 SMS messages, half an hour of listening to the music, often search in menu. Well, it seems the result is good.


Resume
The device is frankly unpleasant, but with an ability of using two SIM cards at a time and with contemporary functional which may interest potential buyers – those were frightened off with a high price of slider D880 DuoS and those who are already ready for two SIM cards.