The mid-range smartphone from Samsung, the Galaxy J7 (2016) is currently getting serious competition from the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 at the same price point.
While the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 made it to the market as early as November last year, the Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016) was officially released only last April, which means that it is the Korean tech giant who initiated the competition, thinking perhaps that the smartphone from the world’s third largest manufacturer of handsets was the best there is in the mid-range category.
Comparing the two smartphones physically and under the hood would give one the impression that it is a pretty even match.
Both handsets feature a 5.5-inch display with a 72% screen-to-body ratio. Both weighs 170 grams but the Redmi Note 3 gets a better pixel density of 403 ppi compared to the 267 ppi of the Galaxy J7 (2016), notes Yibada.
Under the hood, both smartphones are powered by a quad-core processor. The Galaxy J7 (2016) features a 1.6GHz Cortex A53 processor while the Redmi Note 3 has a 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 processor.
The Galaxy J7 (2016), however, has a bit of an edge in such aspect as it also has a variant that comes with an octa-core 1.6GHz Cortex A53 processor.
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 has the distinct advantage when it comes to cameras. While the Galaxy J7 (2016) features a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, the Redmi Note 3 has a 16MP snapper. But both mid-range smartphones feature a 5-megapixel front snapper.
The battery capability also goes in favor of the Redmi Note 3 with its substantial 4,050 mAh non-removable battery compared to the Galaxy J7 (2016)’s removable 3,300 mAh battery. A good number of users, however, would prefer a removable battery any time of the day.
The rest of the features are evenly match which is why some users are having difficulty in choosing the right mid-range smartphone for themselves.
Marshmallow on the Galaxy J7 (2016) predecessor
When the Galaxy J7 (2016) officially came out of the retail markets in April, it was already laden with the Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box.
However, its predecessor, the Galaxy J7, came out with Android 5.1 Lollipop on it when it came out in June of last year. Latest reports have it that the Android 6.0 Marshmallow is now well on course to the Galaxy J7. In fact, according to reports, the update is now being served to users of the Galaxy J7 in Russia over-the-air, notes the GSM Arena.
The update weighs 1.04GB and should be expected to reach other countries and regions very soon as well.
Incidentally, the Marshmallow update to the Galaxy J7 is also coming to the Galaxy A3 (2016) although it might come out as a manual update for the latter.
The Marshmallow shall bring the App permissions, Doze, a new version of TouchWiz, among many other tweaks and new features, to both the Galaxy J7 and the Galaxy A3 (2016).
An internal competition
For a while, Samsung claimed that it is streamlining its smartphone offerings so as not to saturate the market and avoid its handsets from competing with one another.
It did well last year toward such end but unfortunately for the Korean tech giant, old habits simply never die.
While Samsung has no problem with its high-end flagship smartphones because it only has two to boot for now – the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge, that cannot be said in the mid-range category where the company seems to have over-saturated the market with its Galaxy series phones anew.
For the high mid-range category, it has the Galaxy A series and the Galaxy E series practically vying for the same market.
As if it was not enough of a bad business decision, it just did the same in the low mid-range category when it unveiled its Galaxy C series smartphones to compete with the popular and trending Galaxy J series handsets.