年轻DUOS三星Galaxy GT-S6312智能手机
Editor's Note (May 2, 2013): The following review has not yet been edited for grammatical errors. A final draft of the review will be released soon.
For the original German review, see here.
Samsung Galaxy Young Duos or Samsung Galaxy Fame? At the first glance, Samsung's smartphone models are difficult to tell apart. The Samsung Galaxy Young and Galaxy Pocket Plus are the cheapest models of the big Galaxy smartphone family from Samsung. They are entry level models, which only share the family name, the rounded shape and the Android OS with the big models like the Galaxy S3 or the brand new Galaxy S4.
"Young" refers to the small size, which simplifies control with small hands, and the cheap price for a device that can house to SIM cards: The suggested retail price is 224 Euro, the internet price about 169 Euro.
However, in this price range, dual SIM solutions seem to be wide spread: The Sony Xperia E Dual, the Amoi N821 and the Jiayu G3 also offer this feature. The price of the Sony Xperia J is about similarly low, but it does only support a single SIM.
Case
As already mentioned, our test model looks very much like the recently reviewed Galaxy Fame at the first glance. On closer examination, you'll find their shape slightly different, their cameras on different places and you'll the detect the white labeled "back" and "menu" buttons and the "Duos" logo on the front side.
Otherwise, the Samsung Galaxy Young Duos is, just as its brothers, completely made from plastics and has an appealing, rounded design. Today, the smartphone is available in white or dark blue. The glossy rear side, which unfortunately is a fingerprint magnet, is a feature the whole Galaxy family has in common. The phone has a solid build quality and resists pressure from all sides without yielding. Pressure against the rear side can be seen on the display.
Connectivity
The handy Samsung Galaxy Young Duos features a SoC from Qualcomm, which contains a somewhat older Cortex A5 processor with single core and 1 GHz clock rate and an Adreno 200 graphics card. The performance of the two core components is modest, but at least Samsung incorporate relatively big 1,024 MB RAM. Only just under 1.5 GB of the 4 GB flash memory can be used for apps and files, as the operating system occupies the rest. You can use Micro SD cards with up to 64 GB to enhance the storage capacity.
Software
As all Galaxy smartphones our test model uses Google's operating system Android. Version 4.1.2 is the current version of the OS. Samsung only very carefully adapted the user interface of the OS with its TouchWiz interface. If you every used Android before, you will quickly find your way around.
Samsung does not install much software, but the "What's App" replacement ChatON and the personal organizer "S Planner" are available. "Samsung's App", an alternative app store, which requires both a Google account and a Samsung account, is the only annoying bloatware installed. You should better look in Google's Play Store for apps.
Communication & GPS
Even for cheap smartphones, HSDPA is obligatory today. But, the Samsung Galaxy Young Duos does not support the fast HSDPA+ standard. Bluetooth Version 3.0 is also not up-to-date, but the WiFi module supports standards 802.11 b/g/n and WiFi Direct for communication with other devices. The WLAN reception is even stable and fast with three walls in between and in 10 meters distance.
A GPS module is also included, but our test model does not support the Russian satellite system GLONASS, while the Samsung Galaxy Fame does. Outdoors, it only takes the device a short time to find enough satellites to determine your position accurate to 10 meters.
Phone functions
As with most Android devices, it is very intuitive to use the phone. Apart from calling, the he telephone keypad also offers several other options: You can add numbers to the contacts, write message and even switch from ring tone to vibration there. It is smooth to switch from one SIM to the other. This can be done via the status bar at the top and does not require a reboot of the system.
Cameras & Multimedia
Because the Samsung Galaxy Young only has a single camera at the rear side, it can hardly be used for video telephony. The camera captures images with up to 2.048 x 1.536 pixel resolution or jerky videos in VGA resolution. In addition, the images are hardly acceptable, as the colors look pale and the image blurred.
Accessories
Apart from the tiny power adapter and a USB cable Samsung do not include any accessories. In this price range, Samsung smartphones do not come with a headset. While a lot of accessories are offered on Samsung's web site, hardly anything is especially designed for the Galaxy Young. You can also buy a replacement battery and a new power adapter there.
Warranty
Samsung smartphones come with a 24 month warranty. You can also invoke the warranty in other countries the mobile phone is sold. The customer has to send or bring the Galaxy Young in for repair. Samsung do not offer any warranty extensions.
Input Devices & Usage
Even on the very small 3.27 inch display of the Samsung Galaxy Young Duos you can still work comfortably with the standard keyboard of Android. However, with big fingers, it is difficult to reliably hit the small keys. Furthermore, you'll hardly see much of the display content in landscape mode if the keyboard is opened. There are other keyboard models are available in Google's Play Store, which allow adapting the keyboard to your taste.
Display
In contrary to bigger Galaxy models, you won't find a brilliant Super-AMOLED-display in the cheap Samsung Galaxy Young Duos. You have to live with a conventional TFT display instead. It features a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels, which is even low for such a small display.
On the other side, the brightness is rather impressive and can keep up with top models like the iPhone 5 or the Google Nexus 4: The test sample achieves an average brightness of 451.4 cd/m², but the distribution of brightness is not especially smooth and significantly falls towards the left in landscape mode.
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Brightness Distribution: 86 %
Center on Battery: 471 cd/m²
Contrast: 683:1 (Black: 0.69 cd/m²)
However, the contrast is not convincing. All devices of our comparison have a significantly higher contrast than the 683:1 of the Samsung Galaxy Young. It can only outperform then bigger Samsung Galaxy S Duos's contrast of 518:1. Accordingly the black value of 0.69 cd/m² is not as low as of other devices and black indeed looks notably grayish.
The screenshots of our color measurements depict that the color accuracy of the display is not especially high: Red and in particularly blue differ most notably from their ideal values. Of colors green tones are most accurately represented. Gray levels are not ideal too. Only very dark shades of gray do not differ too much from the ideal values.
The high brightness allows outdoor usage of the smartphone if the sky is overcast. It is not really comfortable and eye-friendly, but you can recognize something for short inputs. You can use the phone without problems in the shade or in bright rooms.
Cheap TFT displays often suffer from narrow viewing angles and this also true for the Samsung Galaxy Young Duos to some extent: In portrait mode the contrast quickly falls and the colors invert when viewed from the sides. In contrast, the image even remains recognizable at acute angles when viewed from the top or bottom.
Performance
Samsung's Galaxy Young Duos and Sony's Xperia E dual do not only share the capability to take two SIM cards, but also the same SoC: the low performance single core Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 MSM7227A CPU with 1 GHz clock rate and the Qualcomm Adreno 200 graphics solution are the core components. In addition, Samsung incorporate 1 GB RAM. So, the Galaxy Young Duos can also run demanding applications.
In the synthetic system benchmarks the Samsung Galaxy Young Duos is one of the slowest devices in our comparison. It performs significantly worse than the Sony Xperia E dual in the AnTuTu and Geebench benchmarks.
| AnTuTu v3 - Total Score (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia E dual | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Amoi N821 | |
| Jiayu G3 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
| Geekbench 2 - 32 Bit - Total Score (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia E dual | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Amoi N821 | |
| Jiayu G3 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
| Linpack Android / IOS | |
| Single Thread (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia E dual | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Amoi N821 | |
| Jiayu G3 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
| Multi Thread (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia E dual | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Amoi N821 | |
| Jiayu G3 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
Samsung's smartphone is also significantly slower than the Sony Xperia E in 3D calculation: In Nenamark the two differ by 69 percent. The Samsung Galaxy Fame sister model with nearly identical look delivers a better 3D performance, too.
| AnTuTu 3DRating - --- (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia E dual | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
| NenaMark2 - --- (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia E dual | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Amoi N821 | |
| Jiayu G3 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
Internet surfing is notably more comfortable with many other devices of our comparison, too: They do not only partly have a significantly bigger display, they also deliver more performance and achiever better results in the browser benchmarks. The Amoi N821 is especially far ahead and the Samsung Galaxy Young is once again one of the slowest devices in all tests.
| Peacekeeper - --- (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia E dual | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Amoi N821 | |
| Jiayu G3 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
| Google V8 Ver. 7 - Google V8 Ver. 7 Score (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia E dual | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Amoi N821 | |
| Jiayu G3 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
| Octane V1 - Total Score (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Jiayu G3 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
| Sunspider - 0.9.1 Total Score (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia E dual | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Amoi N821 | |
| Jiayu G3 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
* ... smaller is better
Access to the 4 GB flash memory of the Samsung in the Galaxy Young Duo is very fast. It's a pity, that only 1.48 GB are free for apps and data once Android 4.1 is installed. You can increase the storage capacity by up to 64 GB with a microSD card, but not all apps can be installed on the additional memory.
| AndroBench 3-5 | |
| Random Write 4KB (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia E dual | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Amoi N821 | |
| Jiayu G3 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
| Random Read 4KB (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia E dual | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Amoi N821 | |
| Jiayu G3 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
| Sequential Write 256KB (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia E dual | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Amoi N821 | |
| Jiayu G3 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
| Sequential Read 256KB (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Young DUOS GT-S6312 | |
| Sony Xperia E dual | |
| Sony Xperia J | |
| Amoi N821 | |
| Jiayu G3 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Fame GT-S6810P | |
Games
The small Samsung Galaxy Young is only suitable for games to some extent: First of all the display is very small and has a low resolution. So, it is sometimes impossible to read the texts in games. The control elements on the display, like virtual joysticks or buttons, are very small, too. But, this also reveals why Samsung call their phone "Young": Even children can reach all areas of the display with their small hands and control a game.
The performance of the Samsung Galaxy Young even suffices to run current 3D games, e.g. "ShadowGun: Dead Zone", but not completely without stuttering. The action shooter "Zombiewood" did not display cutscenes and you can observe a notable stuttering if a lot is going on. Furthermore, loading takes much longer than on faster smartphones.
Voice quality
The voice quality of the Samsung Galaxy Young is decent, but the voice of your conversational partner sounds somewhat muffled. However, our conversational partner in the conventional telephone network heard our voice loud and clear. Speech also sounds decent via speakers. While a rather high volume is possible, the sound begins to distort at about 90 % of the maximum volume.
Emissions
Temperature
We appreciate that the Samsung Galaxy Young always remains cool regardless of the load. While idle the maximum temperature is 29 degrees Celsius and you will hardly notice that the device got warmer. Under load, the temperature steadily increases to up to 37.4 degrees Celsius. This is warm, but by no means uncomfortable.
(+) The maximum temperature on the upper side is 37.4 °C / 99 F, compared to the average of 35.1 °C / 95 F, ranging from 21.9 to 63.7 °C for the class Smartphone.
(+) The bottom heats up to a maximum of 35.9 °C / 97 F, compared to the average of 33.9 °C / 93 F
(+) In idle usage, the average temperature for the upper side is 28.4 °C / 83 F, compared to the device average of 32.8 °C / 91 F.
Speakers
As the small speaker is on the rear side, soft surfaces beneath the phone slightly dampen the sound. Otherwise, the sound reminds us on the Samsung Galaxy Fame's: bass-shy, but a powerful sound with a high maximum volume. Unfortunately, the speakers tend to boom on maximum volume. All things considered the sound is rather decent for such a small, cheap mobile phone.
Energy Management
Energy consumption
So far, the Samsung Galaxy Young performed average in many aspects and so it does in energy consumption. The Jiayu G3 with bigger display has an above average energy demand. Its maximum of 4.1 Watt significantly exceeds the 2.7 Watt of the Galaxy Young. All other devices in our comparison perform better here.
The Amoi N821 and the Jiayu G3 also require more energy than our test device while idle. The Sony Xperia J and Xperia E dual are about on par with the Galaxy Young here. Apart from the fact that the maximum energy consumption is too high the Galaxy Young is about class-average.
| Off / Standby |   0.01 / 0.1 Watt |
| Idle |  0.9 / 1.1 / 1.3 Watt |
| Load |
2 / 2.7 Watt |
    
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Key:
min: ,
med: ,
max: Voltcraft VC 940 | |
Battery Life
In regards of battery life the Samsung Galaxy Young performs rather average too: With its 4.81 Wh battery, it achieves a maximum runtime of 16:05 hours. This is significantly shorter than the Sony Xperia E dual's, which features a bigger battery. Because of their bigger displays the maximum battery lifes of the Amoi N821 and Jiayu G3 are also significantly shorter. In our WLAN test the Jiayu G3 and the Galaxy Young achieve an equal runtime of just under 8 hours. The Sony Xperia E dual performs better again.
Verdict
Are you looking for the cheapest possible smartphone, but with full-fledged Android? With the Galaxy Young Duo, Samsung does not only offer such. Thanks to the phone's compact size, it is also decent for children and persons with small hands. However, it is slightly thicker than many high-end models.
The performance is rather low for an Android smartphone. But, apart from occasional stuttering, it suffices the majority of everyday tasks. However, it is not appropriate for complex games. Build quality, design, speaker, and energy consumption are decent. One of the most important features works very well: switching between two SIM cards without reboot.
Overall, the Galaxy Young Duo includes everything required for a smartphone. However, a low resolution display, muffled camera pictures, and only few accessories are cons, which are usual in this price range.
If you are looking for a bigger smartphone and require dual SIM support, you could consider the Amoi N821 or Jiayu G3 and you will get your money's worth. In many aspects the Sony Xperia E dual is on par with the Samsung Galaxy Young. So, the decision is rather a matter personal taste.
