# Review - Samsung Galaxy Core – Is It Just Another Offering By The Korean Tech Giant?



## anmolksharma (Jul 15, 2013)

Before writing this stuff I was having a tough time in counting all the phones manufactured by Samsung India under ‘Galaxy’ line-up. Surprisingly Samsung has whopping 15+ smart phones on sale today in market under ‘Galaxy’ label. The range starts from as low as Rs. 5000 for Galaxy Y and goes upto Rs. 40,000 for a Galaxy S4. In between there are ‘n’ number of Galaxy devices at almost every possible price point. I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing but that definitely fades the exclusivity factor.

Strangely another Korean company – the automobile giant Hyundai has also gone the Samsung way by implementing their so called ‘fluidic’ design to every car manufactured by them. From Eon to i10; from Verna to Elantra, one can easily recognise the familiar fluidic design cues. Such practice by the manufacturers certainly saves lots of money for the them(by using the same design platform) but it slowly creates boredom as the exclusivity factor vanishes too soon.  It looks like such practice is little common with Korean companies.









Anyhow let’s get back to the purpose of this post. Today I got a chance to use my friend’s newly purchased Samsung Galaxy Core – A latest launch by Samsung in Indian market at the price of around Rs. 15,000. Along with this phone I also had quick hands on with Nokia Asha 306 which was also acquired by one of my friend recently. I will come back with separate post for the quick hands on review of Nokia Asha 306.

Samsung strengthened (?) its Galaxy line up by introducing Galaxy Core in Indian market last month for a price tag of Rs. 15,000. The smartphone is powered by a 1.2 GHz dual core processor along with 1GB RAM,  8GB internal storage, 5MP camera  and SD card support upto 32GB. At this price point this looks like a fair hardware but is it really so in the real world scenario? We check out. 





It is a dual sim Smartphone which is equipped with 4.3” TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours with 480 x 800 pixels resolution  , (~217 ppi pixel density). Samsung mid range phones are never known for their screen quality and we are neither expecting much from this smartphone. The screen, however, is very responsive and for general day to day use it’s just fine. The touch does it job fairly nice.  The screen resolution could have been a bit better but that should not be a deal breaker. Surprisingly this phone does not have auto screen brightness feature.  It has a 5 Megapixel main camera equipped with LED flash along with standard 0.3MP front facing camera for video calling purposes.







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The camera quality is good for outdoor shoots and below average for indoor shooting with low lightning conditions. The phone supports video recording with a resolution of 800 x 480 at 30 frames per second. It has touch to focus feature and also a burst mode to click 8 continuous pictures and then select best from them. For day to day photography needs, the device will just hold fine.




The exterior of this phone is like any other Samsung smartphone with plastic back cover and chrome boundary around the phone. Just like any other android phone it has three capacitive buttons for the home menu, back and showing the list of open apps.  The power button is on right side and the volume rocker on the left side of the phone. As expected it does not have any dedicated camera button. This phone is nice to hold and use and is very light when compared to Galaxy Grand. Overall phone’s design is on the strategy of please all; offend none types.

Performance wise this phone does a fairly good job, thanks to the 1GB RAM along with 1.2 Ghz Dual core processor. Samsung could have made this phone even better value for money by sporting at least a 1.4GHz dual core unit in the device. It has around 4.5 GB usable internal storage with additional SD card support which can be upto 32GB.



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 It comes with Android JellyBean 4.1.2 loaded with Samsung proprietary apps . Features like 'Smart Stay' that recognises when the user is looking at the device and Voice commands/Voice unlock comes preloaded as found in expensive Galaxy variants like Note 2. The user interface is similar to other Galaxy devices. It is easy to use, responsive and somewhat fast. There was no lagging under normal operations. This phone can easily handle games like Temple Run, Subway surfers etc. Under heavy use like opening multiple applications with network/Wi-Fi/3G on, one may just find the 1.2GHz dual core unit to struggle a bit to cope up with the load.  But for average day to day use the performance is snappier.







Battery is removable type rated @1800 mah which provides decent backup time and one can easily manage throughout the day on a single full charge. Call quality and speaker phone is good. The phone comes with standard non-push in types ear phone with average sound quality.

To sum up, Samsung Galaxy Core is another addition to the already overcrowded mid range Android smartphone market and definitely catches fancy of customers. We can say that this phone offers value for money but since it is a new launch I will suggest prospective buyers to wait for the price to drop by couple of grands in few months and then it will be the real value for money mid range android smartphone.

Disclaimer - I am in no way an expert Android user/reviewer. This review is completely based on my views, user experience and may have possible shortcomings. Please bear with that.

other Reviews also available on my blog In Search Of My Kind Of World & The Story So Far: Review - Samsung Galaxy Core – Is It Just Another Offering By The Korean Tech Giant?

Thanks folks for reading


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