Nature UX goes dual-SIM.......

The Samsung Galaxy Grand runs Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean out of box, skinned with the latest TouchWiz launcher, dubbed Nature UX. Its user interface is basically identical to that of the Galaxy S III mini and S II Plus, which is hardly a surprise given that the two share the Grand's Android version and screen resolution.

Beyond the obvious benefits to the user experience compared to stock Android, a clearly midrange handset takes advantage of the same premium combination that powers the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II.

The lockscreen is a standard "tap and drag in any direction to unlock" affair and there're ripples accompanied by water-drop sound as you drag your finger. There are a number of additional unlock routines provided also - motion, face and voice among them.

There're three customizable lockscreen shortcuts, and you can drag one to activate the corresponding app. That there are only three is rather odd since on the Galaxy S III there are five, and it has a smaller (albeit higher resolution) screen.

• The dock at the bottom of the homescreen fits five custom shortcuts. The rightmost one always opens the app drawer, but the other four can be set to any shortcut or even a folder.
• As usual, you can pinch to zoom out and manage homescreen panes - add, delete or just reorder them. You can have 7 panes at most, which are enough to fit plenty of content even if you use widgets that cover an entire pane.
• The notification area is quite feature-rich and offers quick toggles for Wi-Fi, GPS, Silent mode, Screen rotation, Bluetooth. You can swipe to the side to get even more: Mobile data, Blocking mode, Power saving and even Multi-Window support.
• Below the toggles is the brightness slider, complete with an automatic mode checkbox. There are also a couple of other useful things like the Settings shortcut in the upper right corner, the time/date to its left and the carrier name at the bottom.
• This being Jelly Bean, you get expandable notifications to get more info. You can expand and collapse them with a two-finger swipe and the top one is expanded by default (if the app that put up the notification supports it, of course).
• The app drawer accommodates both app shortcuts and widgets. Unlike stock Android, you cannot move between tabs by swipes - you have to explicitly hit the widget tab. Some will find this more logical (scrolling past the available apps to find yourself in the widgets takes some getting used to).
• Using pinch-to-zoom reveals an overview of the pages and lets you rearrange them, but you can't create new ones. Hitting the menu key reveals some more options, including hiding apps or enabling tap-to-uninstall mode.
  

 

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