Samsung Champ Deluxe Duos Review

Introduction:

The Samsung Champ Deluxe Duos is one of the most affordable touch screen devices out there and that means a lot of compromises in exchange for the low price tag. The Champ Deluxe Duos deserves its name only if we speak about its price - otherwise it is no champ at all, but an ordinary feature phone with a 2.8-inch resistive touchscreen and dual-SIM card support.

We’ll be blunt - there are no sane reasons to get a feature phone in this day and age, if not for price. And with the Champ Deluxe Duos being one of the cheapest out there, it gets our attention. Still, the difference with most affordable Androids is very tiny, so let’s see if it is justified.

Design:

There is nothing particularly striking about the compact and plastic body of the Champ Deluxe Duos. The device is very light and not too thick, and the patterned plastic back reassures you won’t drop it. It is all plastic, of course, but overall this compact phone lays well in the hand, like a cute little toy.

There are three physical buttons below the screen and they are comfortable to press.


The display is rather mediocre with colors fading out when viewed at a slight angle, and with a low pixel density that would make you remember the 8-bit console era.

Interface and Functionality:

This is a feature phone with the standard Samsung interface, but what takes some getting used to is not the UI itself, but the resistive screen. If you have never used a touchscreen before it will look clunky, and if you have used a capacitive one it would be annoying. You’d have to double tap and apply more effort to get things rolling.


When it comes to basic functionality, though, the interface has got most things covered. The phone book support 1,000 entries, with a call log 30 dialed/received and missed calls.

One big annoyance with Samsung’s interface is the lack of a back button. Whenever you go deeper into the menus and want to go back one step, you cannot. The best you could do is go back to the home screen and once again redo your routine stopping one step shorter.

There are even native Facebook and Twitter clients, but the initial setup is a bit of a pain. Samsung is also equipping this phone with its Chat On instant messaging system that also works on smartphones and does not eat up your SMS allowance, but instead uses your data connection.

However all those services that require you typing in any way become a huge pain with the slow resistive touchscreen and the T9 keyboard. Getting this feature phone with texting in mind is definitely not a good idea.

The dual standby SIM card support means the Champ Deluxe can work with two SIM cards, both of which go under the battery. That means there is no easy way to swap them - you’d have to take out the battery to change cards. Both being on standby, you still choose one that is active from a notification dropdown, and that would be your main card. You can, of course, receive calls on the other one.


Internet and Connectivity:

Connectivity on the Samsung Champ Deluxe Duos is pretty basic with the notable absence of Wi-Fi. You get GPRS/EDGE 2G, though, an Internet browser, and even push email. Bluetooth connectivity is also on board, which is good.

Loading up complex webpages is a no-no, but for most basic web searches the browser does a passable job. You also get the Opera mini browser with its excellent web compression techniques that make it slightly easier to browse the web on such slow connections.

Camera and Multimedia:

The 1.3-megapixel fixed-focus camera with no flash sits on the back of the device, and takes photos that will hardly ever go into a frame. It is extremely basic, producing images of low quality lacking in detail and with a lot of noise even on a sunny day.



Video is recorded at the horrific QCIF resolution – 176x144 pixels.

When it comes to multimedia, the device does support microSD cards of up to 16GB. The slot is located on the side, under the back cover, but you don’t need to take out the battery to access it.

The phone plays back music easily and has a relatively noisy loudspeaker. FM Radio is supported on this device, as well.


We could not get any of our video files to play on the device. Anything with a resolution higher than QCIF was a no-go.

Call Quality and Battery:

Sadly, the microphone Samsung has used here is somewhat abysmal - our callers could understand what we are saying, but reported voices being extremely distorted, as if coming from a tin can. The phone also easily picks up annoying side noises.

The earpiece though sounded fine and fairly clear.

Being a feature phone, and with a fairly large for its size 1,000mAh battery the Champ Deluxe Duos easily lasts a couple of days without going to the charger. Talk time is quoted at the whopping nearly 16 hours, while on standby the device lasts around 21 days.

Conclusion:

The Samsung Champ Deluxe Duos is priced very affordably and in many markets it would be the cheapest touchscreen phone. However it comes with its trade-offs, and they are too big to ignore. The resistive touchscreen makes even mundane tasks like texting slow, and being a feature phone, you are limited to virtually no apps with this device.

If you pick this phone to start your touchscreen phone journey, we would not be surprised if you end up disappointed. The Samsung Star III Duos is a device that would cost a few bucks more, but will bring a much, much better feature phone experience. And if you can spend some more, the cheapest Androids like the Galaxy Pocket and Y would be an even better introduction to the touchscreen phone world.

If money is of absolute priority, though, and/or if you are planning to give this to a kid just for the bare basics, only then we could see a reason for getting this device now.

Samsung Champ Deluxe DUOS Review: