Samsung Galaxy J1 hands-on

This is the Samsung Galaxy J1 – the latest entry-level offer by the company that’s set to headline Samsung’s low end on the market.

The phone is set to be priced very attractively and will come in three hardware versions – two will have a 64-bit Marvel Armada Mobile chipset with either single or dual-SIM options and the one we have with us here – a Spreadtrum chip with dual-core 1.2GHz processor and dual-SIM abilities.

The Samsung Galaxy J1 is indeed an entry-level piece of hardware but still manages to bring a lot of bang for the buck. It has a 4.3″ display of 480 x 800px resolution, 5MP camera on the back, a 2MP acmera on the front, 720p video recording, GPS, FM Radio and 4GB of storage expandable through a microSD card slot. Finally Samsung has fitted a 1,850mAh battery that said to handle some 10 hours of calling – not bad.

The Samsung Galaxy J1 is built entirely out of plastic but it’s of the matte kind, making it pleasant to the touch and also less-prone to smudges and fingerprints. It’s build is robust and doesn’t give out any creaks or unpleasant sounds. The buttons on the Galaxy J1 are very sturdy as well with a solid feel and good feedback. The home button is slightly elevated compared to other Samsung smartphones.

The display on the Samsung Galaxy J1 isn’t the sharpest we’ve seen but offers good viewing angles, plenty of brightness and also vibrant colors – more so than we expected from the market position.

Samsung Galaxy J1

The phone is built into a plastic frame that packs the beveled front which houses the touchscreen and buttons as well as a removable back panel under which we find the swappable battery and entries for the microSD card and the two microSIM cards. The outer frame of the Samsung Galaxy J1 features corners that outstretch slightly leaving the top and bottom portion of the frame recessed.

While this doesn’t seem to offer any usability advantage it does give the Galaxy J1 an interesting, out-of-the-ordinary look.

The software on board the Samsung Galaxy J1 is a simplified Android 4.4.4 KitKat-based TouchWiz UI. It offers the bare-bones TouchWz without the fancy productivity features we see in Samsung’s upper-level smartphones. TouchWiz is fast and smooth on the Galaxy J1 and we didn’t experience any hiccups and issues with it.

The Samsung Galaxy J1 is a decent entry-level device that, just like all of its peers, will be made or broken by its pricing. However if you want to get it, you might want to look around for the quad-core variant of it (given that rumors materialize and it actually does come out) as it should provide a speed boost over the dual-core one. It is available in either Black and Blue as well as White as in the case of uor unit.