A few months back, Samsung announced two mid-range J series phones in India, the J7 Max, and J7 Pro. We have already reviewed the J7 Max on this blog. The J7 Pro is the slightly costlier version that the J7 Max and it comes with a 5.5 inch Super AMOLED display and is powered by Exynos 7870 Octa core chipset with 3GB RAM and 64GB storage. This is also the first J series with Samsung Pay support. So how does the phone perform in this segment? Let’s find out in this Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro Review.
Design and Build:
While most of the J series phones so far have looked similar, Samsung has done a bit of tweaking with the J7 Pro design and it now resembles the new A series in terms of design. With tapered edges and rounded corners, the J7 Pro looks great. It has an all metal unibody construction and the two antenna lines on the rear panel have been given a good integration making the overall design look good. It is definitely the best looking J series phone so far and we liked the black color of the device. The rear panel has a matte finish and looks premium.
The rear panel has the 13MP camera and LED flash along with Samsung logo. The right side houses the speaker and power button while the volume keys are on the left side along with the two SIM card slots. At the bottom panel, you get the charging and data syncing slot along with 3.5mm audio jack. The front panel has a 13MP camera, LED flash and the usual set of sensors. Below the 5.5 inch display is the physical home button which also doubles up as the fingerprint scanner. There is two capacitive touch button, unfortunately, they are not backlit.
The J7 Pro gives a good feeling when holding it in hand and definitely looks good.
Display:
The Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro comes with a 5.5 inch Super AMOLED Full HD display with 1080p resolution. AMOLED panels always provide brighter colors and J7 Pro is no exception. The color quality looks really good on the J7 Pro with good viewing angles and outdoor visibility. Since it has the light sensor, the overall brightness levels are also good. The touch response is good. It has 2.5D curved glass which adds some premium looks to the phone, but unfortunately, there is no protection offered on the display.
Overall, the display is vivid, crisp and sharp and look good.
Software:
Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro comes with the new UI from Samsung which was available on S8 and S8+. The new UI feels a lot better and looks fresh. It has a custom UI with an option of having multiple home screens without an app drawer or you can even switch to app drawer from the home settings. The settings panel is also has a custom UI. The notification center and quick toggles have also been changed and there is an option to change the layout of the toggles.
Since the phone comes with a SUPER AMOLED display, you can also select the color temperature of the display and also select from the different screen modes available.
The phone comes with a bunch of additional settings which includes the ability to lock and hide apps, one handed UI, multi window, quick launching camera, smart alert and more. The phone also features Dual Messenger feature which is basically the dual apps on other OEMs. Here, you can run two instances of messenger apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype etc. The list of supported apps will be available when you install the app.
J7 Pro also features Samsung’s security apps like S Secure and Secure folder which are found on all Samsung phones for privacy and locking apps. You can also use the fingerprint scanner to lock apps. The phone also comes with a panic mode where you can make an emergency call or sent SOS. It also features Samsung’s existing options like Easy mode and support for themes, wallpapers and icons.
One of the important features of the device is the support for Samsung Pay. This is the first J series phone which comes with support for Samsung Pay and NFC feature. You can add debit or credit card to the Samsung Pay account and make it as a wallet for payment.
Performance:
Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro is powered by the Exynos 7870 Octa Core processor and is coupled with 3GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The Exynos 7870 is a decent mid range chipset and we have seen it on quite a few devices released in India including J7 Nxt. In day to day tasks, the device was a response and there was hardly any issues, but when you push it a bit harder with heavy tasks running in the background, you can some minor hiccups. But nevertheless, the performance was quite good on the phone. The gaming performance of the device was also decent and there were no heating issues on the phone.
The Exynos 7870 is not as powerful as the Snapdragon 625 which powers quite a lot of devices in this segment including Redmi Note 4, Lenovo P2 and also Zenfone 3.
The phone comes with 64GB of internal storage and you get close to 54GB of storage on first boot. There is also an option to expand the storage using the dedicated SD card slot available. The call quality of the device was good, but the speaker located on the right side was average in performance. It was not the loudest one for music playback.
Camera:
Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro sports a 13MP rear camera with f/1.7, auto focus, LED flash and a 13MP front camera with f/1.9 and LED flash. The camera interface on the device is mostly similar to what we have seen on Galaxy S8, but few features are missing. It comes with good set of options and social camera where in you can quickly edit the pictures and upload it to your favorite social site right from the camera interface. The front camera also comes with a wide selfie, sound and shot and also the social camera integration.
Talking about the camera quality, we found the day light shots taken with the camera to have decent quality including detailing, but the color quality was a slight let down when you compare with J7 Max. The overall clarity of the photos looked quite decent. The close-up images also came out well except for the focusing issue which is not a major con but there are some issues in focus. The low light images taken with the device also was decent quality and with f/1.7 the overall clarity was good. The selfies taken with the 13MP front camera was impressive and had good colors and also decent dynamic range and overall we feel this is definitely one of the good selfie cameras in this price segment. Here are some of the samples taken with the device.
Battery:
J7 Pro packs a 3600mAh battery capacity and we tested the battery life in daily usage with calls, browsing, gaming, using the camera and also for social networking. With mixed usage, we could easily get more than a day of usage with almost close to 4- 4.5 hours of screen on time. Unfortunately, there is no fast charging included in the device even with the bigger capacity battery.
Verdict:
So how good it the J7 Pro for Rs 20,990? While the J7 Pro comes with a good design and build, good AMOLED display, improved UI, Samsung Pay support and bigger battery, the pricing for the device is on the higher side. The device comes with only a budget chipset, the Exynos 7870 for this price segment.
If you are in the market for a J series phone, then this is the best you can buy till date. But if you want a more affordable smartphone, then you should be looking at Zenfone 3, Lenovo P2 or the Redmi Note 4 with slightly better hardware and lower price.
| Price: | $284.99 |