Samsung is known for flooding the entire market with a plethora of phones and the Galaxy series is good example. You have a phone for almost any price range right from entry level to the flagship level. Samsung’s consistency has been one of its main reasons for success and it recently launched two “huge” phones – Galaxy Mega 5.8 and Galaxy Mega 6.3.
Today we the have smaller of the Mega brothers and one of the Samsung’s most successful Galaxy phones in India this year – Galaxy Grand. The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 was launched at the end of May while the Galaxy Grand was launched earlier this year in January. Both the devices are at a slightly different price point, but have almost the same internals. Lets dive right into the comparison.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84Q2eEz9yq4
Design and Build Quality
The Galaxy Mega 5.8 and Galaxy Grand look very similar in terms of design, but the Galaxy Mega 5.8 is considerably larger than the Grand Duos. The Galaxy Mega is taller and wider, but thinner than the Galaxy Duos. Both the devices have the trademark Samsung look and feel and an all plastic build.
On the front of these phones, we have the display and above it we have the earpiece at the center and the ambient and proximity sensors, the 2MP front facing camera are at the right of the earpiece. On both the devices, we have the Duos branding on the top right corner indicating the presence of dual SIM features on both the phones.
Below the display, we have the usual set of navigation keys that consists of a physical home button flanked by the back and options capacitive keys on either sides.
The positioning of keys and the design language is absolutely similar in both the devices. On the right side, we have the power lock key.
On the bottom, we have an uncovered microUSB and a microphone.
The volume rocker is present on the left side.
On the top we have the 3.5mm jack alone.
The keys are also made of plastic, but offer nice feedback.
The back of these devices is almost same however, the texture is slightly different on both the phones. The 8MP camera on both the phones is at the same location along with the LED flash and speaker grill.
Opening the back cover, we see slightly modified internals. The Galaxy Mega 5.8 has two microSIM card slots on top and bottom of the battery and the hot-swappable microSD card slot is at the bottom right side of the device. In the Grand Duos, the location of mini or standard SIM cards and the second SIM can be accessed without removing the battery while microSD card is not hot-swappable and is located just below the battery.
Overall, both the devices are pretty similar in look and feel. The Galaxy Grand, being the relatively smaller of the two is easier to handle and pocketable.
Display
The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 has a 5.8inch qHD (540 x 960 pixels) display with a pixel density of 190 ppi while the Galaxy Grand has a 5inch WVGA (480 x 800 pixels) with a pixel density of 187 ppi.
Both the devices have low-resolution displays. The refresh rate on the Galaxy Mega 5.8 was pretty low and we could see the trail of the icons even while swiping from one screen to another.
Both the displays are not upto the mark and we felt that the Galaxy Mega was slightly better with better colors, better viewing angles, better brightness but there was a noticeable blue tint.
Hardware and Performance
The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 and Galaxy Grand are powered by a dual-core Broadcom BCM28155 and have Broadcom Videocore IV GPU. The Galaxy Mega 5.8 is clocked at 1.4GHz and has 1.5GB RAM while the Galaxy Grand is clocked at 1.2 GHz and has 1GB of RAM.
Both the phones have 8GB internal storage out of which around 5.34GB is user accessible and a microSD card slot for expansion.
Out of the 1.5GB RAM in Mega, only 1090MB is usable and 700MB is free when the phone is idle while the Galaxy Grand has 800MB of usable RAM, out of which 480MB is available when the phone is idle.
In terms of performance, both the devices were similar, however, the slightly overclocked Mega 5.8 performs better and the 1.5GB RAM helps.
In benchmarks, the Galaxy Mega 5.8 was ahead of the Galaxy Grand in almost all the benchmarks, but it was just a marginal difference.
Camera
The Galaxy Mega 5.8 and Galaxy Grand have the same pair of cameras with a 8MP camera at the back with an LED flash and 1.9MP camera at the front. One thing to differentiate both the phones here is that the Galaxy Mega 5.8 runs on the latest version of Android 4.2.2 and has the camera app from which has a few more options and shooting modes.
The Galaxy Mega has the same screen for capturing photos and shooting videos while the Galaxy Grand has a toggle switch to choose between shooting photos or recording videos. The image quality is quite similar and the details were pretty nice on both the phones.
Both the phones are capable recording Full HD videos at 30fps and the video quality was similar in terms of colors, contrast and details.
You can check out the camera samples comparison video below to get a clear idea.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI39IcjmEqI
Software features
Galaxy Mega 5.8 and Galaxy Grand, both have the same TouchWiz UI, but Mega runs on Android 4.2.2 while the Grand runs on Android 4.1.2 Both the devices have Multi-window feature, pop-up video and Smart Stay features.
Gaming
The gameplay experience was quite similar on both the phones because of the same hardware. Lots of details were missing in the games, but the games like Asphalt 7 ran really smooth. In other games, the details were kept low, but still there was noticeable lag and jitters.
Battery and Connectivity
The Galaxy Mega 5.8 has a 2600mAh battery while the Galaxy Grand has a 2100mAh and in terms of battery life, we found that the Mega 5.8 was better, but it takes a long time to charge.
In terms of connectivity, there is nothing to separate both the phones as both of them have – WiFi, Bluetooth, microUSB, GPS, DLNA, and dual SIM option.
Conclusion
Among the Galaxy Mega 5.8 and Galaxy Grand, we found minimal difference in looks and performance. The only thing separating them are their prices which are directly proportional to their display sizes.
Contributed by Monish Kumar.