Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 review: Double vision

Very good 8MP sharpshooter

Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 features an 8MP camera on its back capable of snapping photos with maximum resolution of 3264x2448 pixels. There is also a LED flash to help you with the low-light scenes.

The viewfinder handles both still and video capture, so you don't have to switch modes. However, this leads to a problem - if you're shooting full resolution 8MP photos, you'll have to frame your videos using a 4:3 viewfinder.

The Galaxy Grand 2 camera UI

Let's go over the different modes. There are standard modes like Panorama, Night, and Sports. Panoramas are nice; they do a full 360-degree circle, but the resolution is not that impressive.

Sound & shot captures a photo and records ambient sound. It sounds pretty cool - for example, you can hear the sea gulls in a beach photo or the roar of car engines at a race.

The photos the Galaxy Grand 2 takes have plenty of detail, very little noise, great contrast and punchy colors. The noise reduction algorithm sometimes is little harsh, especially on the grass and the tress, but everything else is close to excellent.

Check out the Galaxy Grand 2 camera samples.

Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 camera samples

The Galaxy Grand 2 HDR mode does an excellent job of adding more detail in the highlights without going overboard with the effect and keeping the real-life look of the photos .

HDR off • HDR on • HDR off • HDR on

Here is a panorama shot taken with the Galaxy Grand 2. The resolution might be low, but there is enough detail and once again - great contrast and lively colors.

Panorama sample

Photo quality comparison

You can compare the Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 to the other smartphones we've tested in our photo compare tool.

Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 in our Photo quality compare tool

Grand 2 does 1080p videos

The Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 stores videos in MP4 files with a bitrate of just over 17Mbps on average. Audio is recorded in stereo at 122Kbps and a sampling rate of 48kHz.

Touch focus is available before and during video recording and you can switch back to continuous autofocus if you prefer. You can capture 6MP still images during recording, the quality is as great as the 8MP shots taken with the still camera.

A picture taken while recording a video

Videos captured with the Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 also offer great amount of resolved detail, accurate colors, little noise and good contrast. There are no visible artifacts and the frame rate is steady at 30 fps.

Here's a video sample we uploaded to YouTube.

Here is also an untouched video sample from the Galaxy Grand 2 that you can download directly - 1080p @ 30fps (10s, 20MB).

Video quality comparison

You can also take a closer look at the quality of the Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 videos and how they stack up against other devices in our Video quality compare tool.

Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 in our Video quality compare tool