Samsung’s new budget smartphone line, the Galaxy J series, is the South Korean manufacturer’s latest effort to wrest back some of the initiative it has lost in important markets like China and India. The range is aimed at the entry and mid-range segments in emerging markets for the most part, and while the first device in the lineup, the Galaxy J1, hasn’t exactly managed to do what Samsung would have hoped for, the company now seems to be ready with a few more devices in the pipeline. We have already seen the company introduce the Galaxy J5 and J7 handsets in China. Both the devices come with modest mid-range specifications, and Samsung will have a lot of competition from brands like Asus, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Meizu and Elephone among others, in the ultra-competitive Chinese smartphone market.
The next in line as part of the Galaxy J series seems to be an entry-level handset dubbed the Galaxy J2, which was spotted a few days earlier on India’s import tracking website Zauba. While the listing on the website did indicate an import pricing of around $105 before retailer markups and local taxes, not much else was evident from the listing but for the screen size, which was said to be 4.7-inches. Now, the device has been listed on the Geekbench database, giving us some more details. While not all the hardware specs are immediately available, the Geekbench listing does inform us about the presence of a 1.2 GHz quad-core CPU in the phone, along with 1 GB of RAM. The phone will also seemingly come pre-loaded with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, which is more than what can be said about a lot of Samsung’s high-end handsets.
While the specs do not exactly look enticing on paper, it will still be a significant improvement over the J1, which came with only 512 MB of RAM, a meager 4 GB of storage and a small 4.3-inch screen with a WVGA resolution. The device is still priced higher than the Redmi 2 and the Lenovo A6000 Plus in India, resulting in scathing reviews and disappointing sales. It remains to be seen how Samsung manages to position the upcoming device as the company attempts to regain some of its lost ground at the entry-level and mid-range market.
