Following what seemed to be an almost endless stream of leaks, rumors, and reports, Samsung Electronics has finally announced the Samsung Galaxy J2 for the Indian market. In addition and hot on heels of a report from yesterday passed along by tech blogger Evan Blass, Samsung also took the veil off the new Galaxy J Max phablet, equipped with an oversized 7-inch display and a generous 4,000mAh battery.
Let’s start off with the Samsung Galaxy J2 which has enjoyed a lot more time in the headlines over these past few months. Much to general expectations, the Samsung Galaxy J2 is the company’s first smartphone to employ the so-called Smart Glow LED notification system. It consists of an LED ring surrounding the device’s main camera, which acts as a notification light for a variety of purposes. The Smart Glow LED can also help users capture selfies with their rear-facing camera, using a feature called “Selfie Assist”. Additionally, the Samsung Galaxy J2 benefits from Turbo Speed Technology, or “TST”, said to improve performance by “using the least amount of resources” in order to complete a task “in the fastest time”. This can apparently lead to applications loading up to 40% faster on the Samsung Galaxy J2, compared to devices boasting double the RAM. Which leads us to the hardware specifications themselves: the Galaxy J2 features a 5-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1280 x 720, a Spreadtrum SC8830 quad-core CPU clocked at up to 1.5GHz per core, a Mali-400MP2 graphics chip, and 1.5GB of RAM. In addition, the handset is equipped with 8GB of on-board memory expandable via microSD by up to 32GB, it benefits from 4G LTE, Bluetooth 4.1, and dual-SIM, and features an 8-megapixel camera along with a 5-megapixel front-facing sensor. Overall, the handset measures 142.4 x 71.1 x 8.0mm, it runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and accommodates a 2,600mAh battery.
As for the Samsung Galaxy J Max, this new entry in the company’s smartphone lineup is quite a sizeable chunk of low-to-mid-range technology. It sports a large 7-inch TFT display with a resolution of 1280 x 800, it features a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage along with a microSD card slot able to read up to an additional 200GB of external memory. An 8-megapixel main camera sans the Smart Glow LED resides on the back panel, while a 2-megapixel sensor can be found on the opposite side. Other features worth mentioning include 4G VoLTE support, Bluetooth 4.0, and Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box. The device measures 186.9 x 108.8 x 8.7mm, and conceals a 4,000mAh battery under the hood.
The Samsung Galaxy J2 will be available for purchase in India in Black, Silver, and Gold flavors for the price of Rs. 9,750 (roughly $145), and will hit the shelves starting on July 14th. On the other hand, the Samsung Galaxy J Max will be launched in Black and Gold, and will hit the market at the end of July for the price of Rs. 13,400 ($199).
