Nice. Review on Samsung Galaxy J2

The Galaxy J1 comes at a time when the budget market in countries like India has been taken over by Xiaomi, Motorola, and other Chinese and local manufacturers, which are offering some pretty stellar hardware for low prices. Even Google is playing in this segment through its Android One initiative, and when you look at the Galaxy J1's specs sheet, it’s clear to see that Samsung isn’t really trying hard to make sure the device stand out.

I spent a week with the Galaxy J1 as my main smartphone, so here’s our review of what is one of the most talked about( read leaked) budget Android phones from Samsung in a long time.

Design

Samsung hasn’t really experimented with its smartphones’ design in the past couple of years, and so it isn’t surprising the Galaxy J1 looks like a lot of other phones from the company. However, there’s a small design aspect that makes the J1 look different – the top and bottom of the phone have this slightly raised edge at each side, making it look like it has a rugged covering on top. That’s not actually the case, but it certainly helps in adding a touch of flair to what is otherwise as basic a design as can be expected from Samsung.

What’s also good is the build quality. The sides and back of the Galaxy J1 are made of soft touch plastic( both the sides and back, along with the volume and power buttons, are of the same color), making the phone feel pretty good in the hand. It’s not at all slippery, and overall, the J1 feels very well made. Display

The Galaxy J1 comes with a 4.3-inch PLS LCD display with a resolution of 800×480 pixels. There’s nothing special about the viewing experience on offer here. Being an LCD unit, the colors aren’t at all vibrant, and the display feels a tad drab in terms of colors and contrast. The viewing angles are also average – you will be able to make out what’s on the screen when viewing it an angle, but you won’t find it to be as clear as it would be on more high-end handsets( which isn’t unexpected given the price range.)

The Z1, Samsung’s first Tizen phone, had quite an attractive display despite being such a lowly priced phone, so it’s sad to see the same love hasn’t been extended to the display on the Galaxy J1. The only thing the J1 is great at is the brightness levels. The display can get quite bright, and the phone also offers an Outdoor mode to further increase the legibility of the display under bright sunlight.

Camera

Samsung was clearly focusing entirely on the camera experience when developing the Galaxy J1, as the cameras on this thing easily outmatch the rest of the hardware. Now, these aren’t great cameras by any means, but when you consider how average an experience the phone provides in other areas, the cameras certainly stand out.

The phone comes with a 5-megapixel sensor on the back that takes photos that are, well, good enough. Photos come out a bit too soft, but details are a tad above average( for a 5MP sensor) and noise is kept under control as to not be a problem. Under low-light it’s a complete failure, but like the Galaxy E5 and E7, Samsung offers Night and HDR modes in the camera to somewhat improve performance under dim lighting conditions.

The front camera is a 2-megapixel unit, and it’s pretty good. The photos it takes tend to have some noise, but they also capture an attractive amount of detail and colors. Samsung hasn’t skimped on features that let you take selfies with ease – you get the Palm Gesture feature for capturing pictures by waving your palm in front of the device, and you also get a beauty mode to soften/remove blemishes from faces. The only big issue with the front camera is that it takes a few seconds to save a photo. It’s not world-ending, but it’s odd to see a Processing screen each time you take a photo.

Software

The Galaxy J1 runs a pretty bare bones version of TouchWiz, Samsung’s proprietary UX. It’s probably because of the meager hardware that’s powering this thing, though as you will see in the