Just early last month, Samsung announced their new budget smartphones in India, the Galaxy M01 and M11. But now it seems like they’re releasing a slightly different variant of the former, the Galaxy M01s. It’s not really a replacement for the M01 but a slightly more expensive device with a few differences from the original. The Galaxy M series is only meant for the Indian market so it doesn’t look like the rest of the world will be getting this budget smartphone.
The entry-level Galaxy M01s boasts of a 6.2-inch HD+ display which is larger than the M01. It has the Infinity-V cutout camera design that Samsung has brought to some of its devices. It has an 81.8% screen to body ratio which is pretty decent especially for a budget device. It runs on a Media-Tek octa-core Helio P22 processor, slightly less powerful than the Snapdragon 439 of the M01. It has a 3GB RAM and 32GB storage which can be expanded to 512GB through a microSD card.
The dual rear camera has a 13MP primary sensor and a 2MP depth sensor while the front-facing one is an 8MP camera. It is again slightly better than the 5MP of the previous device. It has a 4,000 mAh battery which unsurprisingly doesn’t support fast charging. The phone still has a micro-USB charging port instead of the now more usual USB-C. It has a rear-facing fingerprint sensor so there’s that.
The Galaxy M01s will ship with Samsung’s One UI Core 1.1 on top of Android 9 Pie. We don’t know if it will be upgraded to Android 11 eventually but there’s a high chance it will at least get Android 10. It will be available in some boring ole Gray and Light Blue colors, but you don’t expect much from budget smartphones at last in terms of colors or design. It will cost around $133 which is Rs 1,000 more expensive than the Galaxy M01.
India is an important market for Samsung, even if things like the Galaxy M series aren’t that attractive to other countries. Budget devices are a pretty huge market in the South Asian country although the Korean OEM is facing tough competition from Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Realme, Vivo, Oppo, etc.
