Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
£100 (US$100) might get you a decent smartphone these days, but what it still doesn't get you is a decent camera. Sure enough, the Samsung Galaxy Core Prime's camera doesn't have an awful lot going for it.
It's a 5-megapixel unit with an f/2.6 lens, an LED flash, and autofocus capabilities. Not all cheap phones come with a flash (for example, the Moto E), so that's a notable plus. The Galaxy Core Prime can capture 720p video.
That's about it for features. While it's a 5-megapixel camera, the default setting will get you 3.9-megapixel shots. This is so that you can obtain a wider 5:3 aspect ratio that fills the display, rather than the squarer 4:3 aspect ratio that the full 5-megapixel setting requires.
Actually taking shots on the Galaxy Core Prime is a slow process, with the autofocus system taking an age to obtain a lock once you've pressed the shutter button.
It can also take a while to jump to the camera app from the lockscreen shortcut.
The quality of the images you'll obtain is mediocre at best. The camera doesn't cope well with large differences in light and dark (high dynamic range) and there's no HDR mode to compensate for that.
Meanwhile the shots I took on a slightly overcast day were murky and noisy, whether taking a close-up of a flower or a landscape shot.
Returning to that initial point, though, you don't buy a cheap smartphone expecting to get a good camera. All you can ask is that the camera takes reasonably accurate, reliable shots for social media sharing and capturing unexpected moments. For that, the Galaxy Core Prime just about does the job.
Click here for the full res image
Click here for the full res image
Click here for the full res image
