Samsung bids goodbye to Internet connectivity for Galaxy J2 Pro

If you have been noticing the smartphone market lately, then it’s not easy to ignore the fact that Samsung’s budget smartphone offerings are devoid of various modern features that rivals offer as standard. Samsung’s entry-level J series smartphones often miss out on basic features such as sensors and backlit capacitive navigation keys. If you thought that Samsung couldn’t omit additional features from their budget offerings, then you are mistaken. Samsung’s latest Galaxy J2 Pro budget smartphone for the South Korean market is devoid of Internet connectivity!

The Galaxy J2 Pro consists of a hardware that fulfils its requirement to be classified as a smartphone — a 5-inch qHD Super AMOLED display, a 1.4GHz quad-core SoC accompanied by 1.5GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. There’s no mention of the OS, but we assume it must be running on Android as it carries the Galaxy branding in its name. It even sports an 8MP rear camera with LED flash and a 5MP selfie camera. The smartphone is kept alive by a pretty average 2600mAh battery. All these specifications are almost similar to the Galaxy J2 sold in Indian market. However, what's different is that there's no 2G/3G/4G and Wi-Fi connectivity.

If you are cross with Samsung for omitting the most important thing that makes a smartphone ‘smart’, then you should consider the fact that Samsung intends this to be the smartphone of choice for students and the elderly — those who can do without apps and all Internet-based services. The J2 Pro in Korea can be considered as a sort of detox phone without being too minimalist, where one can enjoy the latest features without the Internet’s interference.

However, this ‘half-smart’ phone claims to do the basic stuff pretty well. It can do voice calls, send SMS and even take pictures. Since this is meant for educational purposes, it comes with the Diodict 4 offline dictionary app pre-installed along with all the other necessary Samsung apps. It’s not known whether Samsung will ship the phone with Google’s app suite.

To increase its appeal to students, Samsung will be offering a full refund if they plan to purchase a Galaxy A or S series device after passing college. If you are a student or an elderly, does the idea of a ‘non-Internet’ smartphone appeal to you? Would you buy the J2 Pro, especially when you consider its odd $185 price tag?

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