Samsung Gives The Galaxy Grand A Refresh For The Home Crowd

Joe Levin | January 24, 2013 | 21 Replies

Earlier today Samsung announced a version of their mid range Galaxy Grand that will be exclusive to the company’s native homeland of South Korea. The homespun iteration of the grand will come with a 1.4GHz quad core processor as opposed to the dual core 1.2 GHz CPU that the international variant is seeing. Also exclusive to the South Korea will be an LTE radio (with voice over LTE) and of course support for T-MB, which is their mobile television.

Here is the Samsung Tomorrow press release via Flickr:

“Samsung Electronics rolls out 5-inch large screen entry-level smartphone Galaxy Grand via three major domestic carriers. Beefing up its large screen smartphone lineup with this latest release of Galaxy Grand, Samsung Electronics has further consolidated the market trend favoring bigger screens. Galaxy Grand boasts premium performance despite reasonable price.”

The rest of the specs for the South Korean version are as follows:

Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean
5 Inch Display With WVGA 800 x 480
8MP Rear Camera (1080p Full HD) With A 2MP Front Shooter
NFC With S Beam
USB 3.0
8GB Internal Memory Expandable via MicroSD Card To 64GB
Multi-Window
2100mAh Battery
1GB Of RAM
Bluetooth 4.0

Originally the Galaxy Grand was announced back in December under two different model numbers. The i9080 which is a single SIM device and the i9082 that is rocking two different SIM card slots. The i9082 was slated for a Q1 2013 release with the i9080 to follow shortly afterwards. These devices were originally supposed to be sold in developing markets and so far we’ve seen varying price points from India (Rs. 21,500 or US $400.37) and The Ukrain (4,444 UAH or US $547)

The South Korean version of the unlocked Galaxy Grand will come in at just 350,000 won or US $327. That’s a major home town discount compared to what the rest of the world has to pay. Also since this is an entry level device it fits in very nicely if you were to compare it to Samsung’s Galaxy Note II which is priced at 990,000 won or US $927.

It’s crazy how fast things change in tech these days. Just a few short years ago the Galaxy Grand would be a high end device and now it’s almost an afterthought. I know we have a lot of international readers so will any of you guys be picking this phone up?