The 2016 edition of Samsung’s upcoming entry-level smartphone, the Galaxy J3, will apparently be launched on AT&T, according to a tweet by tech journalist and prolific tipster, Mr. Evan Blass. While AT&T is yet to officially confirm the news, the device is already available on a couple of prepaid carriers in the US, so AT&T offering it on its network shouldn’t exactly be a massive surprise. Back in January, Sprint had officially announced the launch of the Galaxy J3 (2016) on Boost and Virgin Mobile at a price of $179.99. The device was officially announced back in November last year and is currently available for purchase in China. Samsung is also expected to launch the handset in other emerging markets like India at the end of this month.
Taking a quick look at the tech specs of the device, the Galaxy J3 (2016) features a 5-inch Super AMOLED display panel with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. The device is powered by a quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 CPU, and has 1.5 GB of RAM. Globally, the smartphone comes with a choice of either 8 GB or 16 GB of internal storage, but in each case there’s a microSD card slot capable of handling cards of up to 128 GB in capacity. There’s an 8-megapixel camera on the rear, but the front camera differs from market to market. While the versions sold in China come with 5-megapixel selfie-cams, the one being sold in the US comes with just a 2-megapixel sensor on the front. There’s no word on which one will make it to AT&T, but the variant with the 2-megapixel front-cam will probably be a good bet.
The rest of the tech specs too are along expected lines for a device in this price-range. The Boost and Virgin Mobile versions of the smartphone comes with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop out the box, but there’s no telling if the AT&T version will launch with Marshmallow or the older version of Android. A 2,600 mAh battery, LTE connectivity and support for Bluetooth v4.1 and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n come as standard, as do a proximity sensor and an accelerometer. The rest of the details will probably only be available once AT&T decides to make it official.