Samsung Galaxy J Series has been the mass puller for the Korean giant. This is precisely why Samsung keeps on expanding its J series so frequently. Yesterday, Samsung added two new ambitious handsets to the Galaxy J portfolio: the Galaxy J7 Prime and Galaxy J5 Prime. Both these phone are significant upgrades to Galaxy J5 6 and Galaxy J7 6 which were launched in May. And here’s our first impression of the new J-Series duo.
Samsung has tried to do something different with the Galaxy J5 Prime and Galaxy J7 Prime. Both of these devices appear closer to Galaxy A series than J Series. Samsung has ditched J-series signature plastic built and introduced premium metal unibody design and 2.5D glass on the front. There are conventional plastic strips on top and bottom to accommodate cellular antennas. The curved edges ensure that they fit well in hand. You can easily operate J5 Prime with a single hand, but with J7 Prime you might have to stretch your mitts times and again, or perhaps use your second hand.
The back of the phones is non-removable and so is the inbuilt battery. The left edge houses a hybrid SIM card tray and a volume rocker. On the other hand, there is a power button and loudspeaker grill on the right edge.
Top edge is clean. On the bottom, there is a microUSB port and a 3.5mm audio jack. In typical Samsung fashion, there is a home button clubbed with the fingerprint sensor and flanked by back and recent apps capacitive keys.
Both the phones have TFT displays with the right amount of pixel crunched inside. The screens look vibrant, sharp, bright and offer good viewing angles. Interestingly, Samsung adamantly continues to ignore the ambient sensor here as well. An Outdoor Mode, however, softens the blow.
The Galaxy J7 Prime employs a 1.6GHz Exynos 7870 chipset (same as J7 2016) supported by 3GB RAM and 16GB with internal storage which can be expanded up to 256GB via microSD card. On the other hand, the Galaxy J5 Prime is powered by a 1.4GHz quad-core chipset coupled with 2GB of RAM and 16GB onboard storage which is once again expandable up to 256GB using microSD card. In our limited hands-on, apps loaded quickly on both devices. The J7 Prime particularly manage to keep lot more apps running simultaneously.
On the software front, both devices come out of the box running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow based TouchWiz UI. With J-series, Samsung has always introduced innovative features in its TouchWiz UI and this time was no exception. After S-Bike and UDS- Ultra Data Saving option now Samsung has turned its attention to S Power Planning and S Secure. This new battery saving feature allows users to reserve a certain amount of battery for calling purpose. Also, it can re-route calls to an alternate number when the phone runs out of battery juice.
The S Secure, on the other hand, is a security feature which can lock and hide application and encrypt all data which is being transferred on a Wi-Fi network. Both these features sound really promising but we couldn’t test the veracity of Samsung claims at the event. Apart from these additions, it’s the same familiar TouchWiz UI that you will be interacting with.
What also stood out for us was the 13-megapixel rear camera on both phones. Under the indoor conditions, it manages to focus and capture images quickly. The picture quality of the shots I clicked seemed fair on the phone display. Having said that, I will reserve my final verdict until I get to spend some more time with these phones.
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Samsung continues to evolve it J series with some well thought out products. The J5 Prime and J7 Prime certainly makes more sense that all their predecessors. With the new design, decent hardware underneath, and new software features, the J7 Prime and J5 Prime have what it takes to continue the J-Series legacy.
