Samsung Galaxy J7

At a time when everyone starting from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Amitabh Bachchan seems to be a fan of selfies, Samsung has launched its budget selfie phone (in phablet segment) to lure such selfie lovers. With the launch of this phablet, Samsung has geared up to raise the stakes in this segment, which is mainly dominated by young brands like Xiaomi, Micromax Lenovo and OnePlus. With the arrival of this new baby, Samsung is eyeing to recapture some of its lost ground during the coming festival season in India. Let’s find out, whether specifications that are bragged on the paper do actually make this phone stand out in its league or not in a Samsung Galaxy J7 review: Design: If you have owned a Samsung device earlier then you will find it quite familiar to your previous phone. The same old removable plastic back panel doesn’t add to its looks. However, despite its big size the phone fits well in the hand. As far as physical keys are concerned it features one volume rocker on the left side, a power button on the right and a home button just under the 5.5 inch HD display. Two capacitive touch buttons are also provided for switching apps, accessing menus and managing other functions. Display: The phone boasts a stunning 5.5 inch Super AMOLED Capacitive Touchscreen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels which produces 16 million colors. Like numerous Samsung’s AMOLED featured phones, this phone also produces bit oversaturated yet stunning colors with wide viewing angles. However, the downside is that the phone’s display doesn’t come with Gorilla Glass covering to protect it from scratches. Hardware: The heart of Galaxy J7 is equipped with a 1.5GHz Exynos octa-core processor to ensure a snappy performance. With 1.5 GB of RAM, it’s been able to offer a swift multitasking experience. Although the phone carries 16GB of inbuilt storage, but the icing on the cake is its memory expansion which support cards up to 128GB. Camera: Being dubbed as a selfie phablet, the phone flashes a 13 MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera to capture decent selfies. To ensure that you get a decent selfie in low-light condition, the makers have decided to add flash for the front camera. The phone is also capable of recording videos in 1080p resolution at 30 frames per second. Connectivity: As far as connectivity is concerned, the phone can be used on 4G (LTE), 3G or over 2G networks. It also comes equipped with Bluetooth v4.1, Wi-Fi, NFC, GPS, GLONASS and Micro-USB for varied purposes. Battery Life: Samsung Galaxy family's newest member derives energy from its 3000 mAh battery, which looking at its massive size seems little undoing. Much cheaper phablets like Xaiomi Note and Honor 4X features 3100mah battery, offers 100 mAh of extra juice. As per our assessment, with moderate usage it should last a day. User Interface: The phone runs on latest version of Android Lollipop 5.1 with Samsung TouchWiz UI loaded on top of it. Overall, its user interface is similar to that of other Samsung devices due to it's sluggish Touch Wiz UI. Conclusion: Whatever time we spent with this device, we were pleased with its performance. The device ran smoothly without any lag or heating issue. Overall, as per our parameters we score this device 7.2 on a scale of 10. Samsung Galaxy J7 is being exclusively sold on Flipkart. So if you are planning to buy it from a shop near you, we are afraid you will have to return home disappointed. Note: For exclusive coupons or offers on Samsung Galaxy J7 don’t forget to check out deals section in the website. Samsung is having a relatively good year with phones like Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge being hailed as massive improvements. Establishing momentum at the high-end price segment, Samsung is trying woo budget phones buyers with likes of Galaxy J7 and Galaxy J5, which are exclusively retailing on Flipkart for competitive prices. If you are planning on buying the Galaxy J7 here are answers to all your Questions to help you make up your mind. Question – How is the display on Galaxy J7? Answer – Samsung has done a great job with the AMOLED display on Galaxy J7, even at a comparatively lower price. General users who love the rich over-saturated tones and deep contrasts on Samsung’s AMOLED panels will love this one too. Others can tone down saturation levels from settings. Question – How is the outdoor visibility on Galaxy J7? Answer – The Galaxy J7 screen is bright enough to be legible outdoors. Samsung has also added an outdoor mode which enhances screen brightness and automatically switches back to battery friendly brightness state after 15 minutes. Question – How is the design and build? Answer- Samsung Galaxy J7 for an instance reminded me of the very popular Galaxy Grand, perhaps because of the rounded chrome finished side edges, but the comparison would be unfair. It is slimmer, more polished, with well-balanced weight, but essentially plastic-ky. It lacks any wow factor or metallic touch, but at the same time, doesn’t feel cheap. Question – How much Internal storage space is free? Can Apps be moved to SD card on Galaxy J7? Answer – Out of 16GB, 11.49GB is available at user end. You can also transfer parts of apps to SD card. You will also get 100GB of OneDrive Cloud storage free with Galaxy J7. Question – Is USB OTG supported? Answer – Yes, USB OTG is supported. Question – How do you take screenshots on Galaxy J7? Answer– Alright, this is the basic one, but we did find several users asking for the same, understandably so, since the process departs from the conventional “power key + volume down”. You can press the home button and volume down together to click screenshots. Question – How well did the Exynos chip in the Indian variant of Galaxy J7 perform? What are benchmark scores of Galaxy J7? Answer – Day to day performance was smooth without any issue. We played several high end games like Asphalt 8, OverKill 3, etc., but the handset didn't heat up much. On Antutu the handset scored 37,795 and on Quadrant the handset scored 21834. Overall day to day performance is very good. Gaming performance is decent considering its price. Question – How much RAM is free on first boot? Answer- Out of 1.5GB around 600MB is free on first boot. Multitasking was efficient in our brief time with the device. Question- How is the Samsung Galaxy J7 camera? Answer – The camera performance is quite good. With our initial testing, we felt that it was better than Moto G 3rd Gen. Images look even better on its AMOLED screen. The Selfie camera however, is a very standard affair, which in no way means that it is bad. Samsung has used a front camera flash too, but we didn’t find it very useful. Question – How is the call quality? Answer – Call quality is very good in our area. Question – Do both SIM cards support 4G? Answer – No, only one SIM card supports 4G networks. Question – Is there any Wifi issue in Samsung Galaxy J7? Answer – Yes. Several users are complaining about abrupt Wi-Fi disconnections in Galaxy J7. Our review unit also seems to be plagued by this issue. Question – How is the Battery backup on Samsung Galaxy J7? Answer – The Samsung Galaxy J7 easily lasted more than a day with moderate usage. With heavy usage however, battery drainage is rather steep. Question – Is the battery removable on Galaxy J7? Answer – Yes, battery is user replaceable. Question – Are capacitive keys backlit? Answer – No, capacitive keys are not backlit. Question – How is the software? Answer – Android Lollipop based TouchWiz UI on Galaxy J7 is similar to the latest version which is also present on flagship Samsung phones like Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Note 5. We didn’t notice any lag with UI transitions. There are still several pre-loaded apps which we didn’t need. Question – Is the loud speaker any good? Answer – Loudspeaker loudness is just average, sound quality is good though. Question – What comes inside the box of Galaxy J7? Answer – Inside the box, there is a 1.5 Ampere fast charger, USB cable and a pair of headphones. Expert Analysis Most Samsung phones which we come across at budget price have bog standard hardware and rely heavily on the tier 1 branding. However, Galaxy J7 is different and holds so much more substance. Samsung has finally made a decent and compelling low-cost handset.