Samsung Galaxy J2 2016: A budget phone, marred by low storage

By Rahul Sethi Most people I meet nowadays are still awaiting the perfect phone to buy, and they strictly say that spending more than Rs 10,000 on a smartphone is a sheer waste of money. When I ask them what they expect from their phone, the answers are vivid and sometimes beyond my contemplation. But a common criterion put forth, time and again, is the unconditional absence of any lag in the device. When Samsung launched the new Galaxy J2 – priced at Rs 9750 – they informed, in a humble manner, that they had a ‘new innovation to reveal’. Heads turned, mouths murmured – a J-series device with innovation? Samsung surely cares about the budget segment, but the care is often limited to launching an assortment of choices in the Rs 8,000 to Rs 15,000 price range, with slight modifications, if any. Nobody talks about innovation in this segment. But they did, that too a ‘conjured in India’ innovation, of putting a ring of LEDs around the rear camera, that glows softly in different colours, making you question if awing over lights is childish. It isn’t.  TST or Turbo Speed Technology is another ‘innovation’ that Samsung introduced with the Galaxy J2 2016. It was developed at the India R&D centre, and is an algorithm to clear up traces of apps running in the background, to free up more memory (RAM) space to make way for new applications. Samsung claims that the new Galaxy J2 is faster, by up to 40 percent. But is all this possible just on the basis of an algorithm? Build and Design Samsung Galaxy J2 has a simple plastic build that resembles the previous version closely. There are no fingerprint sensors, bottom edge speaker grilles or unibody packaging; just the usual J-series design characterised by a removable back cover and battery, physical home button and unlit capacitive keys. Smart Glow is a new addition that manages to slightly distinguish it from the rest. And so do the colours – it’s available in gold, silver and black.  Hardware and OS The Galaxy J2 sports a 5-inch Super AMOLED display, dual SIM 4G (VoLTE) configuration, 8MP rear camera and 5MP front camera, 2600mAh battery. It is powered by a Spreadtrum quad core chipset with 1.5 GB RAM and 8GB of storage. I have tested the TouchWiz interface previously with this combination of specs, and it’s exactly like the Galaxy J3 all over again. A head to head speed test reveals TST does give a slight push to the app launching speed; but that is like cruising at 65 kmph now, instead of 60 kmph while racing against the superbikes. Storage is another problem you can’t evade. The Galaxy J2 has a microSD card slot and runs the Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS. Flex storage is by far one of the coolest features of Android Marshmallow, wherein the external storage can be formatted in such a way that phone ‘sees’ it as internal, and apps can be downloaded on it. There is no such provision, though, on the Galaxy J2 2016. On the contrary, consider the table below.  There are around 7 pre-installed third party apps, 5 of which are Microsoft apps – OneDrive, OneNote, Word, PowerPoint and Excel – all requiring considerable disk space. Even though the processor is quite powerful and the RAM capacity is low, TouchWiz UI runs over Android. Sadly, flex storage is not supported. Low onboard storage is a concern, as it means investing separately in a microSD card. The latest interface has some unique changes though, like compressed apps for quick launch, a down-scroll app drawer, smart glow for notifications and an intelligent aid to take selfies from the rear camera, and the propriety S Bike app, to make it stand out of the crowd. Display, Camera and Battery To even things out, Samsung Galaxy J2 2016 has a vibrant display, the latest interface and a glowing ring to make it stand out of the crowd. The 5-inch Super AMOLED display has a 720p resolution and accurate colours to match its bright portfolio. Though there is no ambient light sensor to automatically adjust screen brightness according to the ambient light.    Galaxy J2 has an 8MP rear and 5MP front facing camera that offer a decent value for daily use. The shutter is particularly fast to capture a photo and double tap to launch camera is supported. But everything gets taxing indoors. It’s difficult to capture a stable shot due to much slower shutter speeds, which I felt is tweaked to compensate and let in more light. Noise wrecks the front camera. So the rear camera selfies in low light aren’t anything to drool over. It just has better colours and slightly more details. The phone usually lasted for a day on a single charge, with the Smart Glow turned on. Given the chipset a much higher runtime was expected.   Conclusion Turbo Speed Technology is a nice innovation, but it’s not something a user can take away trusting his daily-use woes would be spared – of under-performance and lags. If you still buy the phone, it’s because of the super bright and colourful display, and the camera. I am just starting to understand everything that a budget user wants, but it feels like so is Samsung. The author is a technology writer at Techmagnifier and tweets at @techysethi. Apart from writing on technology, he dwells on photography and music.