Samsung Galaxy J2 review: Little things

Gallery sans wireless features

The TouchWiz gallery has been borrowed from the Galaxy flagships (with a reduced feature set). The default view shows photos grouped based on time. Thumbnails are shown on a clean white background and you can change their size with a pinch zoom.

Gallery

Editing tools include simple things like cropping and making collages, you can go into the Photo editor for more advanced editing options (note that you have to download those, they wasn't pre-installed). There's no support for online galleries though.

The Share button allows you to send a photo to a wireless printer, but the DLNA/TV sharing functionality is missing.

Editing a photo • sharing a photo

Only Google Play Music

Samsung's TouchWiz music player was one of the most feature-rich apps, but Samsung dropped it in favor of Google Play Music. This means no Sound Alive, not even an equalizer.

Only the standard Google Play Music is provided

It's a capable player for offline music play, it does online streaming too. You can bolster your music collection with stuff from the Google store too.

Shopping for a new album

The Samsung Galaxy J2 also features an FM radio, a rarity on Galaxy phones these days. It can record radio broadcast (subject to local laws) and provides an alternative to your music collection or internet "radio".

FM radio with broadcast recording

Video player

The video player is similar to the gallery. It supports all kinds of video file types and codecs, up to 4K 2160p encoded with the new H.265/HEVC codec. As usual, multi-channel audio (AC-3, DTS) is not supported out of the box.

The pop-up video player is gone, but you can still beam can beam the audio over Bluetooth. There are extensive subtitle settings with adjustable font and text size, text color, edge and background. Multiple presets are available and you can make your own.

Browsing videos • subtitles and other settings

Audio output is very clean, decently loud

The Galaxy J2 started off very well in our audio quality test. When connected to an active external amplifier, the smartphone showed average volume levels and excellently clean output for one of the better showings out there.

There's little distortion when you plug in a pair of headphones too, which is quiet impressive for the price range. Stereo crosstalk rises a moderate amount but the other readings remain as good as they were and loudness stays unchanged. All in all a very solid performance by the Samsung smartphone.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Samsung Galaxy J2	+0.05, -0.25	-93.0	93.0	0.031	0.029	-92.8
Samsung Galaxy J2 (headphones attached)	+0.03, -0.16	-93.2	93.2	0.0042	0.056	-58.9
Meizu m1 metal	+0.02, -0.12	-93.6	93.5	0.0016	0.0068	-93.9
Meizu m1 metal (headphones attached)	+0.03, -0.16	-93.2	93.2	0.0042	0.056	-58.9
Oppo R1x	+0.01, -0.04	-93.5	92.9	0.0010	0.400	-94.7
Oppo R1x (headphones attached)	+0.22, -0.03	-92.6	90.4	0.0029	1.144	-69.8
Motorola Moto E (2015)	+0.02 -0.06	-90.8	91.1	0.0026	0.097	-90.9
Motorola Moto E (2015) (headphones attached)	+0.05, -0.06	-90.2	90.7	0.0029	0.063	-51.4
Xiaomi Redmi 2	+0.06, -0.04	-94.8	95.9	0.026	0.016	-95.8
Xiaomi Redmi 2 (headphones attached)	+0.04, -0.06	-94.0	91.0	0.039	0.053	-70.0

Samsung Galaxy J2 frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.