A cheap phone that lasts longer
Launched last year in China and India, the Galaxy J5 is now officially available in the UK, and it’s rather a good budget phone. The case looks slightly old-fashioned, with its rounded chrome rim and matt black, white or gold plastic back, but it’s well made and easy to hold. While other budget phones expect you to put up with a dull screen, the J5’s display uses Samsung’s AMOLED technology – the cheapest model yet to do so – for a stunningly vivid image covering the whole sRGB colour range.
Battery life is another strong point: our video-playback test took nearly 18 hours to wear out the J5, narrowly beating Samsung’s top-of-the-range S7. That’s amazing for a lowcost phone.
We found Samsung’s TouchWiz version of Android 5.1.1 Lollipop ran fairly smoothly on the J5’s Snapdragon 410 processor; just don’t expect it to cope well with the most demanding games. The question, though, is whether (or when) the J5 will get Android 6 Marshmallow. Samsung has confirmed the new software for its more expensive phones, but there’s no news yet on the J5.
One particular reason to hope for an upgrade is that Marshmallow lets you assign a microSD card as ‘internal’ storage, removing some limitations on which files can go where. The J5’s 8GB of built-in storage might as well be zero: with half already taken up, there’s barely enough room for one HD movie download and a few apps, let alone the photos and videos you’ll be taking. A 32GB microSD card only costs around a tenner, but it’s not ideal, and there’s no option to buy the J5 with more internal storage.
In sunshine, our photos from the J5’s 13-megapixel photos looked sharp and detailed – unless the photos are taken in direct sunlight, when Samsung’s software let it white out parts of the picture. In cloudy weather and indoors, our shots were dim and fuzzy. We’ve seen worse, but if photos are important to you, this might put you off.
At £160 without a contract from phone shops, or 20-odd quid less from Amazon, the J5 is strong competition for the likes of Motorola’s Moto G, which does have Marshmallow and a better camera, but can’t match the J5’s screen quality or battery life.
VERDICT
The J5’s screen and battery life merit recommendation – we might have given it a fifth star with Marshmallow.
SPECIFICATIONS
5in 1280x1720-pixel screen • 13-megapixel rear camera • 5-megapixel front camera • 8GB flash storage • microSD card slot • 802.11n Wi-Fi • Bluetooth 4.1 • 3G/4G • Android 5.1.1 • 142x72x7.9mm (HxWxD) • 146g • One-year warranty