Samsung’s budget smartphone’s prowess previously wasn’t as good as it should’ve been. It can be attributed to the fact that the rise of Huawei, Infinix etc. has spoiled our habits with some excellent releases. The J2 Pro can arguably be called as one of Samsung’s better budget releases. The smartphone’s price-tag sits at 24,000 rupees while it was released somewhere around July 2016.

Customary budget design and build materials

The J2 Pro features Samsung’s trademark design albeit with a nice addition to its back panel. Before we go into that, we’d first talk about its build quality and materials used. They predominantly include plastic while a chrome plated metal ring separates the front and back panels that has the tendency to lose its coating upon contact with sharp objects.

Its back panel houses a new feature which Samsung refers to as the Smart Notification Indicator. It’s nothing more than an LED indicating incoming calls, unread messages and other notifications but it does increase the J2 Pro’s stock in our opinion.

Last but not the least, the smartphone’s dimensions are within the realms of acceptability with an 8mm width and 138g weight especially considering the smartphone is a budget device.

Good enough display

The Galaxy J2 Pro features a 5.0 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with 294ppi pixel density. This allows the smartphone to support a 720p resolution which ultimately means that you’ll be getting an adequate enough graphical experience atop the device.

Borrows its cameras from the J2 Ace

We’d label the Galaxy J2 Pro’s cameras as very satisfying particularly as Samsung’s prowess in producing excellent smartphone cameras is very well known. Statistically, the J2 Pro features an 8 megapixel primary snapper with an LED flash. The camera is loaded with customary features such as geo-tagging, touch-focus, HDR and panorama for you to use when needed.

Speaking of its selfie camera, we’re very happy to see a 5 megapixel sensor here. It could very easily have been a 2 megapixel one and kudos to Samsung for not being greedy here.

What else is there?

The Galaxy j2 Pro is powered by a 1.5 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 processor with 2GB of additional RAM. 2 gigs of RAM is welcome news as it gives the smartphone some much needed fuel to smoothly run the built-in Android Marshmallow. However despite that, we do expect the smartphone to lag very occasionally.

Its internal storage banks at 16 gigs of which you’ll be getting 10.5GB for personal use but if that’s not enough for you, an external memory card slot is present at your service. We didn’t really expect fast charging in the J2 Pro but we hoped to see a fingerprint scanner in the device. Unfortunately that isn’t the case with dual-SIM capability, a removable 2600 mAh battery and 3 colour schemes rounding-off the smartphone.

Galaxy J2 Pro pros:

• Smart notification indicator is a feature to cherish
• 2 gigs of RAM will do its best to smoothly run the built-in Android Marshmallow
• Two excellent camera sensors (for its price)
• 5 inches 720p display is good for a Samsung device in this price bracket
• Dimensions are pretty neat considering other budget Samsung devices
• Removable battery is always a plus if you plan to buy the J2 Pro for the long-run

Galaxy J2 Pro cons:

• All plastic build
• No fingerprint scanner is a definite negative