Samsung Galaxy J2 Prime Unboxing, Initial Review: Your Next Budget Phone?

Samsung Galaxy J2 Prime Unboxing, Initial Review: Your Next Budget Phone?

Yesterday Samsung officially launched the Galaxy J2 Prime in the Philippines, the newest star of the Korean crew’s (budget) Galaxy. The J series of smartphones have been consistent sellers in Samsung’s lineup, which might be surprising for the uninitiated that knows the brand for their more expensive, hi-end phones. But while phones like the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edgeare the phones that drive eyeballs and headlines, it’s budget devices like the J2 Prime that makes most of the money.

Samsung Galaxy J2 Prime

  • 1.4GHz MediaTek MT6737T quad-core processor
  • Mali-T720MP2 GPU
  • 1.5GB of RAM
  • 5-inch, qHD TFT display, 540 x 960 resolution
  • 8-megapixel rear camera with AF, LED flash
  • 5-megapixel front camera with LED flash
  • Dual SIM
  • 3G, LTE (Cat. 4)
  • WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS
  • GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
  • Android 6.0 Marshmallow
  • 2,600mAh removable battery

Packaging and contents

The Galaxy J2 Prime comes packed in a plain white box, with the phone’s name written in grey font at the bottom right. The phone’s specs are listed on the rear, which include the quad-core processor (running at 1.4GHz), 8GB of storage, 8-megapixel rear camera, 5-inch qHD display and dual-SIM capability.

Once you break the seal and open the box, you’ll see the phone plus the standard accessories which include a USB charger, cable, a pair of headphones plus documentation. Pretty standard fare for a phone like this

Phone feels solid for a budget device, though there are better options

One thing we really like about Samsung’s phones is that the brand has a very distinct design language the permeates through all of their offerings. The Galaxy J2 Prime has rounded corners, a physical home button that’s flanked by capacitive keys for navigation.

The back of the phone has a textured finish, and is made of plastic. The 13-megapixel rear camera is right where it’s supposed to be, flanked by a single LED flash and the phone’s speaker. The frame of the device might look metal but it’s not, though the finish is good enough to fool people at first glance.

The rear of the phone is removable and taking it off reveals the dual SIM slot as well as the microSD expansion slot. The 2600mAh battery is removable, which is typical of phones in Samsung’s budget lineup.

Moving on the the front, you’ll see the 5-inch qHD TFT display. On paper the display probably sounds horrendous, but it’s not that bad – despite being a TFT panel it has pretty good viewing angles, and you only start to get major color shifts (negative film effect) in extreme viewing angles. The qHD resolution is a bummer though, especially when there’s already a heck of a lot of phones in the market today that have full HD displays at the price that the J2 Prime is asking for. There’s a front-facing LED flash for the 5-megapixel camera as well.

Samsung doesn’t specify the type of quad-core processor used on the J2 Prime, but according to AnTuTu the Korean firm used MediaTek’s budget MediaTek 6737T quad-core processor running at 1.4GHz, paired with 1.5GB of RAM and 8GB of expandable internal storage.

That’s pretty sedate as processors go, and while it’s perfectly capable of running most Android apps nowadays, more demanding Android games like NBA2K17 may have problems running smoothly on the phone. That 1.5GB of RAM is also a little worrying, but we’ll have to use the phone as a daily driver first to see if that’s enough for day to day use.

On the software front you get Samsung’s custom UI that’s also present on their higher-end phones, along with the customization that comes with it. We found the flat icons used by the J2 Prime pleasing to the eye. Samsung’s commitment to pushing out timely software updates is also a major plus with this phone – we actually received an OTA for that improves the camera’s performance and other tweaks as we were writing this article. Android Marshmallow runs under all of that.

There you have it. Samsung’s Galaxy J2 Prime isn’t a budget phone for everyone but what the phone lacks in hardware it makes up for in software and after-market support. The phone is priced at Php 5,990 and will be available to buy on the 18th.

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