Samsung DuoS D880 Review

Overall Rating

Dual sim.

Battery.

I've bought this model just for the dual sim capability in order to take advantage from the different pricing policies between mobile phones companies.
The quality of the material is not the best but is quite acceptable. The battery cover could be much more stiff and firm. I've realised that it has a very good camera in daylight shots. The camera mode is activated really fast in this model. The camera functions are plenty and very useful. As with most mobile phones the shots in dark place are poor. Its menus are very simplified and easy. I find very good the calendar and the internet browser. In addition if you install the java opera mini 4.1 you'll have a very powerful browser, compatible with nearly every site in internet.
What I find in general bad is the battery consumption. Under a mediocre usage I've to charge it at least every two days. However there are some solutions about that.
Firstly try lowering the brightness of the screen and enable a short period of time for the dim function. Disable the brightness in keypads as long as you don't really need it.
Secondly if you really don't want both sims activated at all times is easy to deactive one of them without rebooting the phone, such a thing will prolong the battery life at least one day.
Thirdly the radio FM and the Gprs especially with the use of java Opera mini 4.1 will drain the battery after a few hours.
Fourthly avoid the permanent activation of Bluetooth for the use of wireless headset. Use the wire headset instead and by deactiving the Bluetooth you'll save much power.
The policy of Samsung is to use different batteries for nearly every model in order to make the use of no name batteries difficult. Such a thing is really inconvenient since the phone under normal use don't have big stamina and the need of spare battery is imminent. I guess the reason of the low battery duration is its size, which is relatively very small for the size of the phone.
Something else I find annoying is that when I connect the phone to PC in mass storage mode I can't receive or make phone calls.
The maximum size of microSD that operates normally is 2 Gbytes and that is really very low when there is in the market High Capacity microSD of 8 Gbytes reasonably priced. Also is impossible to change microSD cards without turning off the phone since it's situated behind the battery.
The media player of the phone is very basic but not bad at all and it plays mp3 and 3g videos.
The size of phone is quite big but is reasonable since it operates constantly with two different sims.
Keep in mind the only the first sims provide full mobile services at three band mode. The second sim is in only dual band mode and offer only phone call and sms. So be careful at the first installation of sims. The side button for selecting instantly the sim you need is really good.
If you ignore the dual sim function it's much overpriced with similar single sim mobile phones. Nevertheless is very reasonably priced an I'd say unique with the constant dual sim support it offers.