Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) review: Good, but no match for the Moto G

The Samsung Galaxy J5, released in June 2015 was one of the first smartphones Samsung that could really go head to head with the Motorola’s 3rd Gen Moto G. One of its biggest its stunning AMOLED display, which is considered somewhat of a rarity in this end of the smartphone market. Therefore, it comes to a surprise to see the Galaxy J3, a cheaper alternative to the J5 also have an AMOLED display.

The Galaxy J3, originally reviewed at £150 is now available for just under £130, putting it up against the 3rd Gen Moto G. The J3, unlike the rest of the J-series smartphones, has a divisive design that may put people off.

Unlike the plain, easy-on-the-eye J5, the J3 has a rather bizarre front panel where its black bezels extend up and around the top speaker. The capacitative buttons, meanwhile, are still white. It’s not the most attractive smartphone we’ve ever seen, but otherwise, it’s relatively inoffensive, and its matt, plastic casing still feels pretty robust and comfy in your hand.

Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) review: Display

Much like the J5 and 3rd Gen Moto G, the J3 has a 5in display with a 1,280 x 720 resolution. However, its AMOLED screen technology blows almost every other budget smartphone out of the water – except the J5, of course, which uses the same panel technology as the J3.

The big advantage that AMOLED screens have over the more common style of screen on smartphones (IPS) is that they have no backlight. With other types of screen, a single backlight is used to provide the illumination when the screen is switched on, with the pixels in front of it adding colour or blocking it off when black is required. The trouble is, no matter how good the screen is, a certain amount of light always leaks through, meaning that black is actually very dark grey.

AMOLED screens work very differently. Instead of one universal backlight, each pixel on an AMOLED screen each generates its own light, which means when its off, there’s no possibility at all of light leaking through from behind to ruin the black level.

It comes as no surprise to find, then, that the J3’s black level is perfect. In fact, I measured it at 0.00cd/m2, and this – combined with the screen’s 100% sRGB colour gamut coverage and the perfect contrast that perfect black leads to – really makes colours pop out of the screen with a wonderful sense of vibrancy and saturation.

In essense, you’re getting the same level of quality as one of Samsung’s top-end smartphones on a handset that costs a fraction of the price, putting it miles in front of its LCD-based rivals. However, Samsung’s Super AMOLED displays aren’t completely perfect, as they often fall behind LCD when it comes to overall brightness. For instance, the J3 could only reach a maximum brightness level of 317.5cd/m2, which is quite low compared to other budget handsets. Sony’s £190 Xperia M4 Aqua, for instance, can reach up to 534.3cd/m2. However, a reading of around 300cd/m2 is still more than usable outdoors.

That said, if you don’t find this is sufficient, Samsung’s included a handy new feature on the J3 called Outdoor mode. Instead of having an ‘auto mode’ tickbox next to the brightness slider in the notification pane, you’ll find a tickbox for ‘Outdoors’ instead, which pumps up the brightness for up to 15 minutes so it’s easier to use in bright sunshine.

With this enabled, I measured a much more impressive max brightness of 447.8cd/m2, which puts it on a much more level playing field with other LCD smartphones. You probably won’t need to use this mode very often, but at least it provides a bit of flexibility, giving you the best of both worlds when it comes to screen quality and brightness.

Best Samsung Galaxy J3 contract and SIM-free deals

Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) review: Performance and Battery Life

However, just because they all look alike doesn’t mean they all offer the same levels of performance. The J1, for instance, makes do with just a dual-core Cortex A7 processor, while the J5 has a much more powerful quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chipset. The J3, on the other hand, uses a quad-core 1.5GHz Spreadtrum SC9830i, which is paired with 1.5GB of RAM.

With two more cores at its disposal, the J3 offers a considerable step up in performance over the J1, as its score of 1,054 in the Geekbench 3 multicore test can attest. However, it’s still not quite enough to beat the J5, as the J3 was 100 points behind the J5 in the single core test with its result of 362, and over 300 points behind in the multicore test. The J3 still feels pretty nippy when you’re scrolling and swiping through Android, but it will start to struggle when you’re using multiple apps simultaneously.

Surprisingly, the J3’s Peacekeeper browser benchmark score of 774 was actually faster than the J5 by over 100 points. However, this still doesn’t eliminate all signs of stutter, as media-heavy websites in particular still tended to be quite jerky in places when scrolling up and down articles.

It’s no gaming machine either, as the J3 wasn’t able to run our usual Manhattan test in GFX Bench GL. Instead, I ran GFX Bench’s T-Rex test, where it managed 423.9 frames (about 7.9fps) in the onscreen test and 251 frames (4.5fps) in the offscreen test. This is far from stellar, and complex games like Hearthstone were completely out of the question. However, if you’re only intending to play more casual games like Alphabear and Candy Crush, then the J3 should still serve you reasonably well.

In terms of battery life, the J3 sat smack in the middle of the J1 and J5, as its 2,600mAh battery lasted a very respectable 13h 15m in our video playback test with the screen set to our standard brightness levl of 170cd/m2. As a result, you’re not going to have many issues lasting a day away from a charger.

Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) review: Camera

The Galaxy J3 is equipped with an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. As you’d expect from the middle J series, sibling, this offers higher resolution photos than the Galaxy J1, but not such detailed shots as the 13-megapixel rear camera on the Galaxy J5. The J3 also only has 8GB of built-in storage (just 4.7GB of which is available to the user), so you’ll likely want to make use of the microSD slot, which supports cards up to 128GB.

Outdoor performance was pretty respectable for such a cheap phone, as colours were bright and accurate even in overcast weather conditions. However, detail was rather lacking, as finer details tended to be very soft and muddy. It also struggled to expose bright clouds correctly, although switching over to its HDR mode quickly helped sort this out.

^ In Auto mode, the J3’s camera struggled to expose brighter patches of cloud and sky

^ Switch to HDR mode, however, and those bright clouds suddenly reappear

Indoor performance was decent, but you’ll have to work around the camera’s slow shutter speeds when you’re not using the flash. As a result, you’ll need to make a concerted effort to help minimise camera shake, as all of our test shots came out quite blurry even when we turned on our external studio lights. Ultimately, the indoor performance is adequate for a £150 smartphone, but you’ll want to make maximum use of whatever natural light you can. 

^ Contrast was decidedly lacking indoors, and object outlines were very soft and hazy as well

Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy J3 is certainly a respectable budget smartphone for £150, but with very little difference compared to the Galaxy J5 in terms of price – just £10 at the time of writing the review in 2016 – I can’t think of any reason why you’d pick this instead. Both have an excellent display, but the Galaxy J5 is faster, longer lasting and has a far superior camera, making it much better value overall.

Of course, there’s also the 3rd Gen Moto G to consider as well. This is just as fast as the J5 and has one of the best budget cameras we’ve ever seen. It also runs the latest version of Android, making it feel newer and more up to date than Samsung’s J series, all of which only run Android 5.1.1.

Samsung’s notoriously bad at providing its cheaper handsets with free OTA updates for newer versions of Android, so those that want all the latest Android features such as Doze and Now on Tap should probably pick the Moto G instead. For me, the Moto G is still our favourite budget smartphone, but if you’re not fussed about what version of Android you’re running and value having a long battery life, then Samsung’s Galaxy J5 is still the J series phone to buy.