Samsung Galaxy J2 Prime Hands-on, First Impressions

Samsung has officially unveiled its latest budget offering for the Philippine market — the Galaxy J2 Prime. Following the success of the former Galaxy J1 (2016) in the country, the new one brings in a few upgrades like a bigger display, more memory, and 4G LTE. Read on our initial impressions to find out more.

The Samsung Galaxy J2 Prime boasts a 5-inch TFT with a qHD resolution or 540 x 960 pixels. Despite it being a TFT panel, it’s got wide viewing angles and vibrant color reproduction. We do miss the AMOLED displays of the Galaxy J1 (2016), though.

Along with the larger display is the inclusion of a front LED flash. It could help brighten up your selfies with the 5-megapixel front-facing camera. The whole front of the J2 Prime resembles the Galaxy J5 (2016) and Galaxy J7 (2016).

The frame of the handset is polycarbonate and also the buttons. The power/lock button is on the right while the volume rocker is on the left.

The top side is where the 3.5mm headphone jack sits leaving the bottom end to house the micro-USB port and microphone.

The rear sports the main 8-megapixel camera with an LED flash and the loudspeaker. The rear is a removable textured back cover giving access to the 2600mAh user-replaceable battery, dual SIM card slot, and dedicated microSD card slot.

Powering the handset is a 1.4GHz MediaTek MT6737T quad-core processor paired with a Mali-T720MP2 GPU. It’s got a 1.5GB RAM to handle multi-tasking and 8GB of internal storage with 3.4GB available to the end user.

The phone runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow skinned with Samsung’s UI complete with custom tweaks and enhancements found on higher priced Samsung phone. There’s support for 4G LTE and also Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, and GPS w/ a-GPS for navigation.

Samsung Galaxy J2 Prime (SM-G532G) specs:
5-inch qHD (540 x 960) TFT display, 220ppi
1.5GHz MediaTek MT6737T quad-core CPU
Mali-T720MP2 GPU
1.5GB RAM
8GB internal storage
Expandable up to 256GB via microSD
8MP autofocus rear camera w/ LED flash
5MP front camera w/ LED Flash
Dual-SIM
4G LTE Cat.4
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.2
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
Android 6.0 Marshmallow
2,600mAh removable battery
144.8 x 72.1 x 8.9 mm
160 g

The Samsung Galaxy J2 Prime is now available in Samsung stores and dealers for Php5,990 starting February 18. We’ll review the phone in the coming days to give our full take on Samsung’s latest budget offering.