A new Galaxy J smartphone comes with some very impressive specs and a metal design that could give us an idea of the company's upcoming Galaxy S5 flagship.
Samsung is rumored to be ditching its love of plastic in its flagship smartphones for more premium materials. The company is widely believed to be working on its next Galaxy S5 flagship and will reportedly ship the handset with a metal case. HTC saw an increase in sales of its flagship HTC One when it unveiled the smartphone with such a premium design. HTC traded in its traditional plastic case and took inspiration from Apple by using an aluminum unibody case. Samsung has now just announced a flagship smartphone for Taiwan that bears a striking resemblance to the iPhone 5/5s, complete with a metal construction that could be a hint of what to expect in the Galaxy S5.
The Samsung Galaxy J appears to be the love child of the Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4. The smartphone has the same 5-inch 1920 x 1080 full HD Super AMOLED display found on the Galaxy S4. The smartphone is also shipping with the same 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, 3GB of RAM, and 13-megapixel camera found on the Galaxy Note 3. It's running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and Samsung's TouchWiz Nature UX.
Samsung has included 32GB of internal storage and a microSD expansion slot that will support up to 64GB microSD cards. The device's wireless connectivity options consist of a speedy 4G LTE-Advanced radio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, NFC and IR blaster. The Galaxy J's dimensions are 137x70x8.6 mm; it weighs 146 g and ships with a removable 2,600 mAh battery.
So far Samsung has launched the Galaxy J in Japan and will release it in Taiwan in mid-December and early January. There's no word for now on any additional markets that may get the smartphone as well.
Many believe that Samsung is using the Galaxy J as a way of testing the waters for the Galaxy S5's rumored metal design. We'll have to wait to see if this actually turns out to be true, but the Galaxy J is definitely a major step in the right direction, bringing premium materials to Samsung's smartphones.
