Samsung has unveiled its latest smartphones for India today — the Galaxy J7 priced at Rs 15,990 and the J5 at Rs 13,990, taking on Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 and Le 2.
Both phones will be available on Flipkart only.
The highlights of the 2016 J7 are as follows:
METAL BUILD: Comes with a new diamond cut metal frame unlike the previous plastic build. This should give some competition to the A7 and models like Xiaomi Redmi Note 3.
AMOLED DISPLAY: The display is has a 55-inch super AMOLED panel, which again sets it apart from competition from LeEco and Xiaomi.
PERFORMANCE: Though the chipset is (only) quad-core and is made by Qualcomm (not Exynos, as we had reported earlier.) RAM too is measly at just 2 GB while 4 GB RAM is increasingly becoming common among youth-oriented models.
However, in terms of storage, the Samsung J7 2016 has 16 GB built-in and supports 128 GB of external memory card. We will update on whether that is a hybrid slot or a dedicated one.
The cameras have 1.9 aperture, which should help in low-light situation. The back unit has a resolution of 13 MP while the front one captures 5 million pixels.
Android version is 6.01 Marshmallow and comes with a double data offer from Airtel for up to six months that will allow consumers to get up to 30GB of free data.
GALAXY J5 SPECIFICATIONS
The J5 2016 has a smaller, 5.2-inch display with HD (and not full-HD) resolution and the same amount of RAM at 2 GB.
Battery is 3.1 Ah, which should easily last through the day.
To create a buzz around the launch, Samsung India has started a social media contest called TapKickVroom, with the promise that the new smartphone will ‘change the way you ride’.
The campaign features Shahid Kapoor, who also features in ads for the existing Galaxy J series phones from the company.
The J7 and J5 were fairly successful models from Samsung, and were also path breakers as the company had managed to keep pricing fairly competitive for the two models at Rs 12,000 and Rs 15,000.
When the original J7 hit the Indian market as a Flipkart exclusive, it had only one challenger — the Lenovo K3 Note. This time, however, its a wholly different game because there are three mighty warriors to for the J7 to fight against — the K4 Note, the 1s and the Note 3. Another new phone, the LeEco 2s, will also be launched in India next month at an estimated price of Rs 15,000.
Its here!?? @SamsungMobileIN Get ready for some chill time on your ride! Guess what #TapKickVroom is & Tweet to win https://t.co/R4Vz779V5Y
— Shahid Kapoor Online (@Shahid_Online) March 28, 2016
In fact, all five handsets are very similar to each other in terms of specifications. All of them, for example, come with 5.5-inch, full-HD displays and octa-core processors (except for RN3 – which has only six cores.)
Yet, Samsung has a secret ace up its sleeve: the display of its model is built on Super AMOLED technology, which offers stronger colors and consumes less power compared to the LCD panels found on the other three models.
While some people find the strong colors offered by AMOLED displays too artificial, the Korean company’s display technology has already garnered a strong following in India.
In addition, the company also has a better reputation and possibly a stronger service network compared to the others.
Another advantage is that the J7 comes with a dedicated MicroSD card slot, which is missing in two competitors.
The processor too is very different from those found in the others.
According to our sources, the Indian version of the phone will come with the ultra-efficient Exynos 7870 chipset.
The Exynos 7870 has been forged under the Korean giant’s 14 nm FinFet technology, while all the other competing phones contain processors built on the more heat-generating, older and less efficient 28 nm technology.
This should have given a clear edge to the J7 in terms of both processing power and battery life.
However, Samsung has built the Exynos 7870 using the low-power Cortex A53 core design and has chosen to limit the speed to just 1.7 GHz.
What this means is that the chipset will be ultra-efficient as far battery is concerned and the 3.3 Ah battery on the J7 should last the same as the 4 Ah unit on Redmi Note 3.
However, because of the low clock speed of 1.7 GHz vs 2.2 GHz on LeTV, the performance is not quite comparable.
Using all eight cores, the J7 2016 scores about 4,500 Geekbench points, which is substantially below the 5,400 points scored by the Le 1s, but at the same time better than the 3,800 points scored by the Redmi Note 3 India version.
The Samsung model’s performance is also far better than the Lenovo K4 Note, which scores less than 3,000 points on the same benchmark test.
However, there are a few things that go against the J7 2016 model as well.
First is the price. The LeTV Le 1s is priced at Rs 10,999 and the other two contenders at Rs 11,999. In comparison, the Samsung model will be priced at the same level as last year’s model — Rs 14,999. That is a difference of Rs 3,000 in this extremely price-sensitive market.
Another key difference is in application memory or RAM. Here, all the other models come with 3 GB, but the Indian version of the J7 will have only 2 GB. This is all the more irritating when you consider that the Chinese version gets 3 GB of RAM. (This part is subject to final confirmation.)
Though this may not make much of a difference most of the time, having 2 GB of RAM could start pinching if you are a heavy user of apps.
One of the unknown factors here is Android 6 Marshmallow. The J7 is the only one among the four phones which comes with Android 6 and it is not known how good Marshmallow’s RAM management is. If it’s really good, then 2 GB may be just as good as 3 GB on Android 5.
Another missing feature on the Korean model is a fingerprint scanner, found on both the Le 1s and Redmi Note.
The J series phone will also contain only 16 GB of storage memory, half that of the LeTV and Xiaomi models, but comparable to K4 Note. However, Samsung offers you the option of extending it using MicroSD cards, which is more useful than having another 16 GB built in.
In the imaging department, the Korean model will have a 13 MP camera supplemented by 5 MP front shooters, much like the rest of the competition. It also seems to offer laser focus, going by the photo of the phone released by Chinese certification agency TENAA two weeks ago.
Overall, we’d say that Samsung’s upcoming phone offers a tough fight in the lower mid-range segment and fans of AMOLED displays could choose the phone over the others despite its lower RAM and lack of a fingerprint scanner.
In addition, the company will also be releasing a 5.2-inch J5 model and a 50-inch J3 smartphone as well. The J5 2016 is very similar to its larger cousin, except that the Exynos 7870 has been swapped with a Snapdragon 400 series chipset and the display resolution has been halved to 720p from full-HD.
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