SGH-D880 Duos : TAKE TWO. Review on Samsung Duo

One thing appeals me the most about Andy Warhol is his famous quote"An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them." … and here comes the artist with its **SGH-D880.

You have seen quite a few on road, carrying two mobile handsets because of  some obvious reasons. Unless you have sufficient reasons you are certainly not gonna carry a single cell phone today, forget alone about two at a time. Gone are the days when I was boasting airs by showing the antenna of my bricky Nokia 6110 peeping out of my shirt pocket. Here the Samsung Duos D880 scores a billion.

After my futile attempts with dual sim adaptors and Chinese model handsets, I was curiously looking for a genuine phone brand to come out with a model with two sim functionality. In absence of any sensible alternative, this piece fitted the bill very well. If you are really not crazy about a most advanced handset with a million goodies, this handset will satisfy your need to a good extent.

After buying this set, I became most unhappy about its usability. Tried to explore its functionality thru the manual, Samsung website, blogs and reviews. You wont find much information about this handset. For the reason best known to the company, publicity for this handset is not visible. People who are using are not aware of the basic functionality of the set.

I would mention some of the features which will help a potential buyer and an existing owner to understand it better. While writing I would prefer to overlook the specifications as it is available everywhere.

On the Basic Functions front the handset satisfies me on seamless dual SIM functionality(both cards are active simultaneously). Features like 3megapix camera, microSD mem, FM radio, Bluetooth are common in every handset now and nothing great to talk about it. Beauty though lies with the battery and with both sim average usage alongwith some applications usage it goes for about 2 days for me with a single charging. Unusual browser button and other key functionality are annoying though.

On the question of Advanced Functions, D880 does not have 3G functionality and the music player does not appeal me at all. One has to be satisfied with the four themes given as default though you will be able to access WAP sites including your gmail and yahoo accounts on the move. Samsung PC Studio 3.22 will not satisfy them who have already been using a Nokia PC interface like Nokia PC Suite.  There is a TV out option but you need to shed out few bucks(cable) to have that work for you.

A D880 user will find the following to be very useful:

People are saying about phone reboots to call on sim 2? Not really, simply Go to your phonebook view/open the number to call and press the sim control button on the left side of the phone(above the volume button)to shift from Sim1 to Sim2 irrestpective of Primary or secondary sim.

To view the content of memory card - goto My Files and hold the # key and the memory will shift from Phone to Memory Card.This is a plus since an outsider will not be easily accessing your MemCard files.

The D880 has an answering machine, You can access it by going to "Settings", then "call settings", then "all calls", then "answering machine". Where you can enable/disable and record your own greeting massage. You can also block numbers for voice calls and SMS.

Though you can have Java based applications and games, you need “jad maker” to convert .jar files to have the java games installed. The memory space for games and applications are just about okey.

Finally, with the code #02068378#, you can tweak a lot of things but use at your own risk. Note down the value before making any changes

If you are primarily concerned about the pain of carrying two GSM handsets and can compromise a bit on other preferences, this one is for you. However if you look for the best of the best in your palm in the name of a gadget there are many options.

Benchmarking here is very difficult since no major players(like Sony ES, Nokia, LG, Motorola etc.) have dual sim handsets to benchmark against. My personal rating for this handset would be in the range of 3.5.

PS: THE PICTURE GIVEN IN MS IS NOT OF SGH 880 DUOS(DUAL GSM) THE VIDEO CLIP AND PICTURE UPLOADED WITH THE REVIEW ARE THE PICTURES OF THE REVIEWED PRODUCT.