Samsung Galaxy J2 2016

Samsung hasn’t made drastic changes to the Galaxy J2 2016’s design, but that said, there have been a few upgrades. For starters, the phone is now bigger, with a screen size bump from 4.7-inches to 5-inches. It’s still on the compact side though, so one-handed usage won’t be a problem. Our review unit was in black, although you can also purchase the phone in gold and silver colour options. The front of the device is classic Samsung. It features rounded corners, and a shiny metallic plastic rim around the edges that breaks the monotony of the otherwise black façade. However, the trim is of poor quality, and gets scuffed and dented quite easily.

As we mentioned earlier, the 4.7-inch display of the J2 has been upgraded to a 5-inch panel. Along with the increased size, the resolution has been bumped up from 960 x 540 pixels to HD, resulting in a pixel density of 294ppi. While the J2 offered an AMOLED display, the J2 2016 takes this up a notch with a Super AMOLED screen. The screen is sharp, and outputs vibrant colours that should satisfy most users who want to watch videos or play games on the device. The lack of an ambient light sensor is a bummer though, requiring you to manually adjust the brightness slider.

The original Galaxy J2 featured mediocre camera specs, with 2MP and 5MP front and rear cameras respectively. The J2 2016 edition bumps this up to 5MP and 8MP units, both with f/2.2 aperture. The camera app is standard Samsung fare, with controls displayed on either side of the viewfinder. On one side, you’ll find the shutter button, front camera toggle, video mode, gallery shortcut and shooting modes shortcut. The other side is where you can enable the timer, flash and filter effects, and access the camera settings.

The defining feature of the J2 2016 is the Smart Glow ring, and we’ve explored the basics of what it can do in our overview. But let’s talk about how useful it is in real life. The Smart Glow LED ring serves three purposes – Priority alerts, Usage alerts and Selfie Assist.

With the J2 2016, Samsung has surprisingly opted for an entry-level quad-core Spreadtrum SC8830 processor clocked at 1.5GHz, which is a step down from the Exynos and Qualcomm chipsets the company usually employs for its devices. While the RAM has been bumped up from 1GB to 1.5GB, the overall performance of the phone is still below par. For instance, there are noticeable lags when switching between apps and multi-tasking, and more than a few instances of apps freezing while using the device. While gaming on the device is fine for more lightweight games, playing graphics heavy titles like Riptide GP2 will result in a few frame drops. It's also worth mentioning that Samsung has equipped the J2 2016 with what it calls 'Turbo Speed Technology' or TST. The company claims that this makes native apps, like the gallery, contacts, camera, etc., load up to 40 percent faster, and we're inclined to agree. However, this doesn't apply to apps downloaded from the Play Store. The other feature of TST is that it shuts down idle background processes and frees up RAM, and taking a look at the RAM section in Smart Manager (screenshot below) reveals that the phone does a good job of conserving memory, even when multiple apps are running in the background.