Samsung has reportedly launched a new entry-level smartphone in India by the name of Galaxy Grand Prime 4G. The device has apparently been listed on the company’s official online store, and carries a price-tag of Rs. 11, 100 ($175). The handset had already been announced at the Samsung Forum 2015, which was held last February in Bangkok, Thailand. The company introduced the Galaxy Grand Prime in India last September, but the device lacked LTE connectivity. In a market increasingly geared towards LTE, Samsung seems to have now rectified its earlier error with the launch of an LTE version of the device, which has already been available in markets like the US for some time now on prepaid carriers like Cricket Wireless. In India, the phone will support the following bands: FDD-LTE – B1 (2100 MHz), B3 (1800 MHz), B5 (850 MHz), B8 (900 MHz) and B20 (800 MHz). As for TDD-LTE, the phone will support band B40 (2300 MHz).
Coming to the hardware specifications of the Galaxy Grand Prime 4G, the device features a 5-inch qHD display with a pixel resolution of 960 x 540. The smartphone is powered by a Snapdragon 410 SoC from Qualcomm, which comes with an embedded quad-core CPU clocked at a frequency of 1.2 GHz and an Adreno 306 GPU. The device comes with 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of internal storage, which is expandable by up to 64 GB with the help of a microSD card. The handset will run Android 5.1 Lollipop with Samsung’s proprietary TouchWiz interface laid on top. The device will come with a 2,600 mAh battery. The Galaxy Grand Prime 4G will have an 8-megapixel primary rear-facing camera with LED flash and 1080p video recording capabilities. The front-facing secondary camera meanwhile, will come with a smaller 5-megapixel sensor with wide-angle lens for better group selfies, also known as groupfies in online social media parlance.
Recent reports have indicated that Samsung will be looking to cut back on launching multiple variants of the same devices with confusing nomenclature. However, ground realities have been different, as the company’s line-ups at the entry and mid-range continues to look chaotic, to say the least. The company had recently launched the Galaxy J5 and J7 smartphones in India and China as part of its renewed efforts to gain back some of the lost market share in mission-critical emerging markets. Samsung is also said to be prepping the launch of yet another entry-level J-series model called the Galaxy J2, in the coming weeks.