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Samsung India is working hard to keep its no. one position in the smartphone market in India intact and has brought in the Galaxy Grand Duos with dual-SIM facility to give a fillip to sales of its touchscreen handsets and counter Micromax’s threat.

The handset, or ‘Phablet’ as Samsung calls it, will have a flip cover in the box and come for Rs 21,500.

Micromax unveiled its Canvas HD with 5-inch screen and Samsung had planned a swift launch of the Grand in order to ensure it did not lose out to the homegrown brand, which is emerging as a monster and eating into the market of even big players like Samsung, Apple and Nokia with its affordable handsets.

The new Galaxy Grand Duos has a 5-inch WVGA TFT screen and is powered by the Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) operating system.

This smartphone comes with a dual-core processor (running at 1.4 GHz) and has 1 GB RAM. Samsung has kept the design language it introduced in the Galaxy S III in this smartphone as well.

The Grand smartphone is equipped with an 8 MP camera with LED flash and there is a 2 MP snapper on the front. The Galaxy Grand comes only in the 8 GB variant but users can jack up capacity to up to 64 GB through a microSD card.

The Galaxy Grand is placed between the 4.8 inch Galaxy S III and the 5.5 inch Galaxy Note 2. However, the screen is limited to a 480x800 resolution in the updated Galaxy Grand, Samsung has stated.

The Galaxy Grand has a 2,100 mAh battery and offers connectivity features like 3G, 2G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, S Voice along with the microUSB. Some other striking features of the Grand are Direct Call, Smart Alert, Popup Video and AllShare Play.

Galaxy Grand will offer multi-app functionality, paving the way for users to access two apps in one go.

The Grand also has advanced call features. In case a user is taking a call on one SIM, Galaxy Grand Duos' auto-forwarding system will automatically redirect an incoming call on the other SIM to the first connection.

An extra feature of the new Galaxy Grand is Near Field Communications (NFC) support with S Beam and Android Beam compatibility, facilitating quick transfer of information from the handset to other NFC-equipped smartphones, tablets or peripheral devices.

So, with more rollouts (and a wider choice), Samsung is ensuring that it is not losing its market even as domestic brands like Micromax offer handsets at price points, which are unmatched in the country.