14 DAY TRIAL // Following the resounding success of Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, Samsung seems to be focusing its attention on the budget-friendly Galaxy J, after it already launched three models in the series this year. The Galaxy J2, first released in September 2015 will be replaced by the 2016 edition, with improved performance.
The first J2 came with Android Lollipop 5.1.1, while the 2016 series will be getting an upgrade to the latest Marshmallow version. Moreover, the J2 came with a 4.7-inch display and only 540x960 pixels resolution. Powered by a quad-core 1.3 GHz CPU and the capacity to store 8 GB of data, the J2 was a safe bet when it came to low-end smartphones.
Key specifications of the upcoming version Galaxy J2 were spotted on Antutu Benchmark via Weibo, showing an upgrade to the Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow operating system and 16GB internal memory and 2GB of RAM, double compared to last year’s model.
Samsung is testing two chipset models
However, Geekbench posted a benchmark test of the Galaxy J2 a few days ago and it showed about the same specifications for the smartphone, except in the RAM department, which was 1.5GB. It seems that Samsung is currently testing multiple variants for this series, before it settles on the final version.
The chipset is also different in the two leaked images, the one from Geekbench shows Spreadtrum's SC9830, with 4G support and a 1.5 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU. This would mean an improvement, at least in the terms of connectivity, since the initial Galaxy J2 supported only 3G.
The image from Antutu showed a lower-end chipset, Spreadtrum SC8830 with 3G connectivity and a slower processor of 1.2 GHz clock speed. It remains to be seen which version will be on the final product.
Samsung also worked on the two cameras on the new J2 model, it will come with a main camera of 8MP and 5MP front selfie snapper. The 2016 series will feature a 720p touchscreen and a 5-inch display. Most likely, the Galaxy J2 2016 series will be released in the first half of this year, before the highly-anticipated Note 6.
