The Galaxy J5 2016 is a mobile company designed for and younger audiences. It is a smartphone that stands out mainly for the great autonomy and also for the features of the front camera, which allows us to take panoramic selfies and has a front LED Flash.
Renewal of the range
Samsung is one of the manufacturers with the widest and most varied mobile catalog. The South Korean giant has mobiles from just over 30 euros, like the Galaxy Ace, to mobiles of more than 800 euros like the Galaxy S7 Edge and this time we will analyze the Samsung Galaxy J5 2016, a mobile that came to market with an official price of 249 euros and that comes to renew the J range that gave the company so good results last year.
In this review of the Galaxy J5 we will analyze in detail all the technical specifications and features based on our experience of use over two months, but first, let’s review what features and functions Samsung has improved over last year’s model.
Continuous design
The new Samsung Galaxy J5 maintains a continuous line, without major changes and without great boasting. Virtually the entire smartphone has been manufactured in polycarbonate with a matte finish that some will like, and others not so much. The feeling to the touch is quite pleasant, does not slip and does not leave the footprints marked as other models do with a brighter finish.
The edges have been reinforced with a metal bezel to protect it from possible shocks and also suits you quite well and improves its final appearance.
The Galaxy J5 (2016) is 145.8 mm wide, 72.3 mm high and 8.1 mm thick. Pretty «measured» dimensions for a mobile that features a 5.2-inch screen. If we take out the screen/body ratio we see that this is 70.7, slightly higher than the 2015 version showing a ratio of 67.5%. The weight of the device is 159 grams that place it in the average.
If we analyze a little more its design, we will see on the top front incorporates the speaker along with the front LED flash as well as the sensors and the Samsung logo, while at the bottom we find the navigation button in the frame of the device.
Reviewing the sides we see that the power/lock button is located on the right side and the button to control the volume on the left side. The top bezel is completely clean and at the bottom we have the microUSB port as well as the audio output.
The back cover is removable, which means you can easily remove it to access the battery. On this back we have the main camera accompanied by a rather powerful LED flash and speaker. Once again, the Samsung logo dominates much of the space.
If we remove the back cover and access the guts of the device we see that the Galaxy J5 is Dual SIM and allows us to use two SIM cards in addition to a MicroSD card up to 128 GB.
High contrast display
The Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016) has a screen size of 5.2 inches, with a resolution of 1.280×720 which is equivalent to a density of 282 dpi.
It is obviously a long way from the «first sword» although the positive face is that the panel used is Super AMOLED, the same one used by the screens of Samsung’s highest-end mobiles.
This technology results in great color coverage and pure blacks thanks to the «off» of pixels in areas that do not need to show color, without the need to use backlighting. As a result, we have excellent contrast with sharper, purer and more colorful images with reduced battery consumption thanks to these «off pixels».
The image quality is very good, although we must not forget, that we are facing an HD screen. The brightness outdoors could be higher, although the biggest drawback may be that we can’t set it automatically as it doesn’t have an ambient light sensor. However, it offers a way in which we can tell you that we are on the outside in such a way that it increases the brightness for 15 minutes or until we turn off the screen.
At larger, it also offers several different display modes that allow you to quickly change the color gamut, saturation and sharpness of this as well as the font and font size settings.
Limited software
The software is usually one of the forgotten aspects for most users when buying a mobile, however, it should not be so. After all, it is the one that manages the hardware and takes advantage, or not, of all its resources, applications, social networks, and is the one that offers greater or less ease of use of your device, etc.
The J5 comes with Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 and with the custom Samsung layer we all know as Touchwiz. Through it, we will have a series of pre-installed applications that may like more or less and be more or less useful. In this way, we find a complete suite of Microsoft apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, OneNote and Skype. Alongside them, you can enjoy S Health, Samsung Club or Smart Manager, an assistant that helps us perform terminal maintenance tasks such as freeing up RAM, managing storage or autonomy from the same place.
As a curiosity, tell that you will be able to have a direct access to the camera pressed twice on the home button. If instead of two, you press three times quickly, what you will get is to reduce the screen size so that you can control the mobile with one hand.
The internal storage space is 16 GB for storage of apps, videos, photos and data in general, although you will only have a little more than 5GB available because the rest of the memory is occupied by the OS. However, you can expand the memory by microSD card up to 128 GB.
Intermittent performance
The Galaxy J5 features the Snapdragon 410, a mid-range Qualcomm that consists of quad-core Cortex A53 at 1.2 GHz clock frequency and which we have seen in other models from previous years such as the Moto G 2015.
This chipset has support for 64 bits and is accompanied by an Adreno 306 graphics processor and 2 GB of RAM.
The performance of the terminal is not good, as we have already seen in the previous section. But not only because of these unexpected «management problems» but also because, the hardware is quite limited and maybe a little old. Obviously we will be able to perform daily tasks such as checking social networks, browsing the Internet, editing photos, etc., but we will notice that the experience in powerful games and at certain times is not the most suitable, with «possible jerking» in games like Fifa 17, Dead Trigger, Asphalt 8: Airborne and the like.
In fact, it’s curious to see how in performance tests and benchmarks like AnTuTu or GeekBench put the Galaxy J5 below its younger brother the Galaxy J3 and evidently far from the top spots.
Camera in the middle
Here is one of the most important sections in the analysis of the Galaxy J5 2016, the camera.
This smartphone is equipped with a main camera – or rear – with a resolution of 13 megapixels, LED Flash and a very good aperture f/1.9, just like the Samsung Galaxy S6. It is also capable of recording Full HD 1080p video.
The front camera, the one that we usually use for selfies and video calls, has LED Flash, something that is not usually very common in most devices, an incredible aperture of f/1.9 and a resolution is 5 megapixels. With it you can unleash your group selfies thanks to the beauty mode and especially the panoramic selfie mode.
However, we see the need to warn that if you activate the front flash it acts as a flashlight and stays constantly on during shooting, which is also accompanied by the blank screen to maximize the light. The results are good, but «something blinding». Here’s a sample of flash usage in a completely dark room. As you can see, the photograph shows a high level of grain, of course, but the total lighting.