Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) Review

Last year Samsung had launched budget smartphones in the J series and the On Series. The J series has been a good success for the company and last week the company announced the new Galaxy J3 (2016). The Samsung Galaxy J3 comes with 5 inch HD Super AMOLED Display and is powered by Spreadtrum Quad-core 64-bit processor coupled with 1.5GB RAM and 8GB internal storage.

The phone is priced Rs 8,999 and comes exclusively on Snapdeal. So how good is the Galaxy J3 for the price, let’s find out in this detailed review.

Related Reading: Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) Unboxing

Design and Build:

While in the design aspect, the Samsung Galaxy J3 does not bring anything new to the table, the company has done some changes to the front panel. It now comes with a black panel irrespective of the color of the handset. The front panel has a the usual set of sensors and as usual, Samsung has not included the ambient light sensor. There is a 5MP front camera, 5 inch HD display and home button along with back and multitasking capacitive keys. The capacitive keys are also not backlit.

The power button is on the right side while the volume keys are on the left side. The top houses the audio jack while the micro USB charging slot is at the bottom. The rear panel comes with the same matte finishing you see on any budget Samsung phone. There is 8MP rear camera, LED flash, and speaker unit along with Samsung logo. The rear panel is removable and so is the 2600mAh battery. The build quality looks like good, but the design is getting dated and it is high time Samsung though about a new design.

Display:

Samsung Galaxy J3 comes with a 5 inch (1280 X 720P) Super AMOLED HD display and the display looks quite good in terms of the colors. The colors are vivid and punchy. While the touch response was not great in the initial usage, it improved over time. The disappointing aspect is the lack of ambient light sensor, which means you need to increase the brightness when you go out. Samsung hasn’t included this sensor in phones priced around 15k as well.

Similar to other J series phone, there is no protection offered on the display. Overall, for the price, the display looks quite good.

Software:

Samsung Galaxy J3 comes with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with custom TouchWiz UI. The UI comes with a custom notification panel and also settings menu. The phone comes with an app drawer and Samsung has not bundled any bloatware with the phone and hence you don’t have unnecessary apps taking up space or running in the background. The UI is pretty similar to what we see on other Samsung devices. It also has the app drawer unlike most of the Chinese UIs.

The phone comes with a new innovative feature called S Bike Mode. S Bike Mode is an innovative feature for bikers. This  feature basically turns off all the notifications on the device when the user is riding a bike. This is sort of do not disturb mode which can be enabled using  NFC. S Bike Mode makes sure that you are not disturbed with calls and notifications while riding the bike.

Related Reading: What is S Bike Mode and how to use it?

The phone comes with customization option in the form of themes. You can also download additional themes using the theme manager app available. The phone comes with basic tools like calculator, radio, file manager, recorder, S planner and more.

The phone also comes with Smart Manager which can manage the battery storage, RAM and also make the device secure. The phone also misses out on easy mode, which was available on Galaxy J2 and J5. Overall software wise, the UI offers decent amount of features and functions but still does not catch up with options offered

Performance:

The phone is powered by a Quad-core Spreadtrum processor which is a 64-bit chipset with 1.5GB RAM and Mali 400GPU. While most of the devices in this price segment have moved to 2GB and 3GB RAM, Samsung is still shipping with 1.5GB RAM. The overall performance of the device was quite decent for day to day tasks, but if you push it for heavy gaming with graphic-rich games, the processor struggles. The gaming experience of the device was average and it struggles with frame skips playing Asphalt 8 Airborne and Modern Combat 5.

Related Watching: Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) Gaming Review

The phone comes with just 8GB internal storage out of which around 4.2GB is available to the user in the first boot. This is one if the disappointing aspects of the phone. You can also expand the storage via micro SD card. The call quality on the phone was good and we never experienced dropped calls. The speaker performance was also decent for a budget phone. The phone supports 4G LTE along with dual SIM cards and we tested the phone using 4G SIM and we could achieve good speeds.

Camera:

While the camera is one of the most important aspects even in budget phones, Samsung has included just an 8MP camera when the competition is offering 13 and 16MP in the sub 10k price point. Having said that the camera interface on the J3 is quite good and works pretty well. It has a plethora of modes available to customize your photos and the default options are included. While the interface is good, the camera itself isn’t the best in terms of specs as it offers only 720p video recording with the rear camera which is disappointing for a phone in 2016.

Now talking about the camera samples, they were quite decent for a budget phone with decent colors and overall quality. The details also good with noise in the acceptable levels. The close up shots have also come good with good colors.

But the low light photos weren’t as good as the daylight ones even with adequate lighting. They were slightly blurry in nature and the noise was also visible. The front facing camera is quite decent for selfies and colors also look good. The video recording was disappointing with just 720P and the quality was not great.

Here are some of the samples taken with the phone.

Battery Life:

Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) comes with a 2600mAh battery and the battery performance was quite decent on the device. Samsung is also bundling power saving mode and ultra power saving modes to get additional battery life. With average usage which included calls, browsing, social apps, a bit of gaming, we managed to get a day of battery life which we feel is good for a budget phone.

Verdict:

Priced at Rs 8990, does the Samsung Galaxy J3 make sense to buy? The market is offering a plethora of devices which have better specs than the Galaxy J3, but the area where J3 shines is the after sales service and warranty of Samsung which is probably missing on many online-only players. So if you looking to buy a new budget Samsung smartphone, this is a good buy, else look for better options like Coolpad Note 3, Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus, Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 or even Coolpad Note 3 Lite with better specs and similar price.