Although Samsung have consolidated their smartphone line up over recent months, there is still room in their range for the high-end devices such as the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note 4, together with the inexpensive handsets such as the Samsung Galaxy J1. And whilst the entry level devices are perhaps the least exciting amongst a given manufacturer’s range, one important point to remember is that today’s budget handset buyers could be looking at a mid-range device or perhaps even a high-end model in the coming months or years. In the case of smartphones, the rule of thumb to apply is that the higher the retail price, the greater the profit margin for the business: the most customers who plumb for the Galaxy S6, the higher Samsung’s profit. And with this in mind, today’s news is the rumor that Samsung is preparing a follow-up device for the Galaxy J1. Indeed, the new device has been tentatively called the Samsung Galaxy J1 Pop.
For Samsung, the lower end models of the range have been somewhat lacking for the business and have hurt how well the Galaxy range sells in developing parts of the world. Samsung’s lower end handsets have tended to be more expensive and lower featured than the equivalent models from even similar businesses, let alone the local manufacturers (which tend to be less expensive than imported devices). Samsung have proven that they are able to adapt their custom TouchWiz interface to run on low-end hardware but perhaps have been too busy working on the high-end devices rather than the inexpensive models.
To recap what is on offer with the Galaxy J1, this is based around a dual core Spectrum processor equipped with 512 MB of RAM (although the LTE version came with 768 MB), a 4.3-inch WVGA screen, a 5MP rear-facing camera and a 2MP front-facing camera. The device ran Android 4.4.4 KitKat, under Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface on the top. At this juncture, we’re not sure what specification Samsung will provide the J1 Pop with, but if it is a little newer, it could be expected that it would be based around Android 5.0 Lollipop. It may also benefit from additional memory and perhaps a higher performance processor too.