Samsung Galaxy Core Prime review: Core values

Simple gallery lacks DLNA

To go with the rest of the software, the gallery is really simplified compared to what top of the line Galaxies are getting. Photos and videos can be filtered by album (that is by folder) or by location. A panel on the left can be used to switch between the different albums.

That panel can be hidden with a swipe to make more room for the images. The pinch gesture that resizes the thumbnails is not available here. Support for online galleries and DLNA is also gone.

Gallery • filtering options • viewing and editing images

Photo editing is supported though our unit did not have the app installed out of the box. It's a free download and supports the usual crop, rotate, color adjust options plus face enhancement, free hand drawing and some stickers and photo frames.

Only Google Play Music out of the box

The discount TouchWiz theme continues with the music player - the Samsung one is gone and there's only Google Play Music out of the box. It's a lovely player with Material Design that fully supports offline play of your tracks, but also handles unlimited music streaming (if those are supported in your country).

Google Play Music

Streaming music can be cached to ensure a seamless playback and can be limited to Wi-Fi only (to reduce data charges). For mixes, you have the option to block "explicit" songs.

A 5-band equalizer is available in the settings with a bass boost slider (available for headphones only) and a surround sound slider. While headphones are plugged in, a special row of shortcuts shows up in the notification area.

Play Music puts playback controls on the lockscreen and replaces your wallpaper with the album art of the track.

FM Radio with recording

An FM radio with RDS support is available, even though Galaxy flagships usually skip it. Audio can be played through the loudspeaker (but the headphones have to remain attached).

A rare function is broadcast recording, you can even hit pause in the middle of recording. Note that this feature might not be available in all regions.

Listening to the radio • recording

Simple video player

A Samsung video player is pre-installed and it actually has a good set of features. It plays FullHD videos - in MKV, MP4 and MOV - containers with support for h.264. As usual audio works as long as you stick to the basics (MP3 and AAC).

A simple video player

Subtitles are supported and you can adjust font size and color, add an optional background and a few other tweaks. There's no DLNA support or wired TV out, leaving Miracast as your only way to put a video on a largeer screen.

Subtitle settings and video player options

Audio output good for the class

The Samsung Galaxy Core Prime put in a decent performance in our audio quality test. The smartphone performed splendidly when plugged into an active external amplifier and then didn't lose too much of its brilliance when we plugged in a pair of headphones.

The first part of the test saw excellent scores top to bottom from the Galaxy Core Prime, garnished with nicely loud output.

Adding some resistance to the line-out brought extra stereo crosstalk and some intermodulation distortion but neither of the readings was bad enough to damage the overall experience on its own. The rest of the results remained great and the volume level stayed above average.

So while we can find a thing or two wrong with the output of the Samsung Galaxy Core Prime, overall it's better than we've come to expect in this price range.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Samsung Galaxy Core Prime	+0.03, -0.29	-95.0	93.7	0.0072	0.009	-93.8
Samsung Galaxy Core Prime (headphones attached)	+0.38, -0.11	-94.8	91.7	0.018	0.279	-52.6
Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime	+0.02, -0.07	-95.0	92.1	0.0053	0.013	-93.9
Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime (headphones attached)	+0.41, -0.04	-93.1	91.8	0.014	0.254	-51.1
Motorola Moto G (2014)	+0.01, -0.06	-91.6	92.4	0.0089	0.014	-91.7
Motorola Moto G (2014)(headphones attached)	+0.02, -0.09	-91.6	92.4	0.011	0.017	-45.7
Motorola Moto G	+0.08, -0.85	-92.1	91.9	0.0059	0.082	-91.4
Motorola Moto G (headphones attached)	+0.10, -1.03	-92.0	91.8	0.010	0.117	-50.4
Nokia Lumia 625	+0.13, -0.10	-90.3	90.3	0.013	0.355	-82.5
Nokia Lumia 625 (headphones attached)	+0.24, -0.00	-90.2	90.2	0.014	0.460	-83.8
Samsung Galaxy S5 mini	+0.03, -0.04	-92.6	90.7	0.016	0.018	-94.0
Samsung Galaxy S5 mini (headphones attached)	+0.23, -0.05	-86.7	86.2	0.052	0.167	-55.7

Samsung Galaxy Core Prime frequency response

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.