Samsung Galaxy Core LTE G386W

  • Released 2014, November
    137g, 10mm thickness
    Android 4.4.2
    16GB storage, microSD slot
  • N/A 325,466 hits
  • 11 Become a fan
  • 4.5"
    540x960 pixels
  • 5MP
    720p
  • 1.5GB RAM
  • 2100mAh
    Li-Ion

Samsung Galaxy Core LTE G386W - Specs

Network Technology GSM / HSPA / LTE
2G bands GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G bands HSDPA 850 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100
4G bands LTE band 1(2100), 2(1900), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 12(700), 17(700)
Speed HSPA, LTE Cat4 150/50 Mbps
Launch Announced 2014, November
Status Available. Released 2014, November
Body Dimensions 132.9 x 66.3 x 10 mm (5.23 x 2.61 x 0.39 in)
Weight 137 g (4.83 oz)
SIM Micro-SIM
Display Type TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size 4.5 inches, 55.8 cm2 (~63.4% screen-to-body ratio)
Resolution 540 x 960 pixels, 16:9 ratio (~245 ppi density)
Platform OS Android 4.4.2 (KitKat)
CPU Quad-core 1.2 GHz
Memory Card slot microSD, up to 64 GB (dedicated slot)
Internal 16GB 1.5GB RAM
Main Camera Single 5 MP, AF
Features LED flash
Video 720p@30fps
Selfie camera Single VGA
Video
Sound Loudspeaker Yes
3.5mm jack Yes
Comms WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot
Bluetooth 4.0, A2DP
GPS Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS
NFC Yes
Radio FM radio
USB microUSB 2.0
Features Sensors Accelerometer, proximity, compass
 ANT+
Battery   Removable Li-Ion 2100 mAh battery
Talk time Up to 13 h (3G)
Music play Up to 59 h
Misc Colors White, Black
Models SM-G386W
SAR 0.54 W/kg (head)     1.10 W/kg (body)    
SAR EU 0.45 W/kg (head)     0.25 W/kg (body)    
Price About 180 EUR

Samsung Galaxy Core LTE G386W - User Reviews

  • This device is a good alternative to flip phones. On top of phone calls and texting, it gives you the ability to easily use the internet, send/receive e-mail, check social media, watch Youtube/Netflix and listen to music. I would suggest forget about gaming because the phone can't handle much more than the simplest, most basic games. Also forget about photos, because the camera is pretty grainy and things tend to come out looking dark and pixelated unless you're shooting in absolutely perfect conditions. But for someone who needs to make phone calls and wants access to a few other capabilities, this phone is fine. Set it to easy mode and it's perfect for an elderly person.

  • Try Amazon, eBay or a repair shop

  • I need a touchscreen for this.

  • Remember this is a Canadian Galaxy Core LTE. I have one if anyone needs help with it.

  • Best phone I have ever used in my life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!­!!!!!!!!!! This is seriously the s9 killer man

  • I bought the phone and less than a year the battery did not last more than two hours without using the device. I tried to buy another battery with Sansumg giving them the model number and information on the battery. they sent me a battery that does not fit and they did not want it back. I tried again later and I got the wrong size and fit again. I went to a store but they did not have any battery for the model SM-G386 W. My battery goes down in two hours without any use and only 3 icons on the screen. It is terrible device.

  • I wanna change my new simcard ... Suddently appear at screen network lock ! I try to change with another sim card but the same problem continue ...... Is there any way to solve it ?

  • I will never again buy a samsung product. This phone is infuriating because it tries continually to impose its crap apps against the owner's wishes. It's also an awkward size and the case back is slippery so it's easy to drop. Advice - do NOT buy any Samsung phone.

  • Hey Jenny, to reset your password your going to have to disable your phone. once disabled you will see something in small text labeled reset password. click on that, Enter in the email that is registered on the phone (in most cases Gmail). if that doesn't work there is a plan B Plan B: if you don't know the email you can hard reset your phone. this means that all user content will be wiped. to do this, power off the phone, once powered off hold the power key + upper volume key + home button key all at the same time, and when you see the Samsung logo let go of the power button and wait till you see a dead android guy. if the dead android guy is still there hold the upper volume key for aprox. 3s. once you are in to the recovery use the volume keys to navigate, and the power button to select. select factory reset. and click yes. wait for it to complete than reboot, Enjoy Hope this worked.

  • I got a galaxy core and I can't get the key pad up because it keeps saying (unfortunately, Logsprovider has stopped.) can someone tell me what to do. thks

  • I have this phone. Can someone help me how to reset the password because I forgot it?

  • Mind started acting weird and now the home button does go to home screen and the recent button doesn't show open apps and play store ain't working

  • i have this phone and how can i get my pictures back???

  • Kills headphonea

  • Is there a way to retrieve all my lost contacts

  • How come you can't change the vibrate on this phone? I don't like having the long vibrate

  • I have the same problem. Any suggestions?

  • Vibrate works fine, maybe you accidentally changed the ring profile. There is a vibrate on/off switch in the menu and switching it off in a profile which would normally have it on won't have it activate until you toggle it back on.

  • Contact your carrier for phone warranty issues. Does the phone ring at all? Did you somehow change your ring profile to silent? Samsung phones have different volume levels/profiles for each type of ring/notification. There is no master volume slider. We can have notifications at low, and ringer at low, but have media played at full volume or other combinations. When the phone rings, it rings through the speaker on the back. If your media volume is down or off, but the phone still rings, use the settings menu to change the individual activity volume level. The icon is a handset. That's the one to change the ringer volume control. The other icons are for notifications, system and others.

  • Nope, once deleted... it's gone. If you saved the files to a microSD card you can attempt to use undelete tools from a PC but from the phone or using its built in memory, sorry can't be done.

  • This is handled by the carrier and not the hardware.

  • I accidently deleted photo's from my gallery. is there any way to retrieve them

  • Vibrate does not work on this!!!

  • I bought this mobile phone 3 months ago. Now speaker is not functioning. Can you help please

  • I can't figure out how to change the number of rings before call is forwarded to voicemail. Even downloaded the user manual Does anyone know how? Thanks

  • That is normal so you don't accidentally turn the phone on/off with accidental presses. And judging by the fact I've practically answered every question to date from all users... I LOVE my Samsung CORE LTE phone!!! As for the guy who noticed his battery failing after 8 months... heck mine failed after 5 months. Which I began doing research for 3rd party replacements and came across a compatibility chart which tells me the EB-L1L7LLU battery is compatible with the EB-L1L7LLA battery. Also I have a 3rd party battery refresher which fixes the internal circuit of the battery if it reports the battery capacity is low too fast which can sometimes be fixed by putting it in the battery refresher. But if after using the refresher the battery is still low, that is when the battery needs to be replaced. (ebay item number: 271741608453).

  • I'm not going to call someone St***** when they said it themselves. Each carrier has it's own method of accessing voice mail, but in general you can hold down the 1 key on the keypad and it will call the voice mail box. The voice mail box logo is even printed below the 1 key on the telephone keypad so how St**** can you be. It is not for me to say. On my carrier (Wind Mobile (Canada)) I can not only hold down the 1 key to access my voice mail, my carrier allows me to text message a code and it will access the voice mail box as well.

  • Yes but unlike the Sony, the Core's battery can be replaceable. I myself am using a 3rd party EB-L1L7LLU battery instead of the native EB-L1L7LLA battery. The two are basically the same and the EB-L1L7LLU is a lot cheaper than the EB-L1L7LLA. The LLU version was made for their Duos Core version of the phone which is has a dual SIM card capability and a 2200 mAh battery. The LLA version is for the Core LTE which is a single SIM card phone with a 2100 mAh battery. The current average price of replacement (3rd party) LLA batteries is $20, while the LLU version averages $5 or less. And I can find higher mAh versions of the LLU (4600) than the LLA (2100) version of the battery. The mAh rating tells us how long the battery can last as it holds a bigger charge (mAh = milli-Amps per hour). Bigger charge = longer lasting battery.

  • You are selecting power OFF from the power off menu when you press and hold the power button? Or are you simply tapping the power button once? Because tapping the power button puts the phone into standby which isn't the same as power off. You need to select the power off option in order for the phone to turn off, if you press any button while it is powering off you will cancel the operation.

  • Change the setting, "What to do with the device", when it pops up on Windows 10 to choose the default action when the device is plugged in. But if file transfer is your only concern you can use an APP called, "Shareit", which was created by Lenovo for use with their tablets but I have it installed on my Lenovo tablet, Samsung Core phone and Windows 10 PC. Without a WiFi data service or a DATA plan I can move files between devices by using the WiFi Direct link. I current move files from my tablet to my phone, my phone to Windows and from Windows back to the tablet all without turning on DATA Wifi though it will turn on WiFi, it will direct connect between the devices instead of actually using a data plan. It moves files at 54Mb/s lightning fast!!!

  • Yes, the front facing camera is a poor 768k quality camera (VGA), while the rear camera is only 5M (1280x720). While the overall spec's don't seem impressive the speed of the quadcore 1.2 Ghz is plenty fast with zero lag time.

  • They will still honor the warranty for phones with a one year warranty for original equipment owners. As for new phones, this model has been replaced by the Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime which has a larger screen (5"), bigger back camera (8M) instead of the Core's 5M and front camera (5M) instead of the Core's 768k (VGA). With the increase in megapixels of the back camera the video capture has been increased to 1920x1080 on the Grand Prime instead of the Core's 1280x720. The only other difference is the Core has an on-board 16Gb memory which can be expanded to 64Gb using microSD cards. The Grand Prime only has 8Gb on-board memory which can be expanded to 128Gb. And that it comes installed with Lollipop 5.0 whereas the Core comes with Ice Cream Sandwich 4.2.2 natively which can be upgraded to Kit-Kat 4.4.2. But everything else internally is basically identical... same amount of RAM (1.5Gb), same screen resolution 540 x 960 pixels (@245 pixel density). They both even have mobile hot spot, which I find very useful for WiFi only tablets. and Bluetooth 4.0 which I use with my Bluetooth 4.1 Bluedio headphones!!!

  • I just bought 1 after my S3 was acting up &now I heard that samsung Isn't making these anymore. Does anyone know if this is True? & if so, how are we to get replacement parts or whatever etc? What if the phone starts acting up or just fails? I hardly use it & the battery in it goes down Fast. I bought this phone not quite 2 months ago. Thx guys

  • yes

  • Does it have any front camera?

  • I power off the phone but it keeps turning back on by itself. Help!

  • How do I get this phont to connect to my windows 10 using file manager to move files.

  • since I've had this phone for about 8 months now.. I've noticed that the battery life time is garbage. It lasts less than 24 hrs while my wife's Sony m2 will last days of her constant use and me i barely pick up the phone unless its to play CoC.. After 8 months i shouldn't be having to recharge at least once daily.

  • Bought this phone in early February of 2015 to replace my recently stolen/lost Galaxy S4. I still use this phone and it works great. I have dropped it a handful of times and apart from one small scratch on the screen it has proven to be a seemingly quite durable phone. (I do not use a case) The phone is fast although it occasionally lags a very small amount, it is hardly noticeable. It has pretty decent battery life although after 9 months of use the battery has noticeably decreased. However it charges fairly quick. In short, it is an excellent phone if you want a Galaxy but can not afford the S.

  • The FM Radio portion of this and any other phone listed under "Connection", isn't a feature to be used like an entertainment device for listening to music. If it actually had an FM Radio we could tune and listen to tunes, it would be listed under, "Features". The FM Radio means it can transmit and receive FM radio frequencies meaning it can possible cause and receive interference if held too close to an actual FM Radio. Even in the manual the word, "Radio" is mentioned 15/14 times, but they all point to interference with the exception of one mention which mentions, "Swype Radio" which I am not entirely sure what they mean, as the phone does NOT have Swype (TM) built in anymore like it did when Android phones were running o/s: Gingerbread 2.5 as in a previous phone I had. When that phone's o/s upgraded to 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), Swype was removed and in Samsung phone's replaced with Samsung's version of Swype which I hated so I bought Swype from the Play store and have used it since. My previous phone was a dual-core 1.5 and I thought moving down to a quad-core 1.2 would be a slight decrease in speed, but boy was I wrong. This phone is frikken amazing. It is faster and with it's double speed downloader option (both WiFi & data are turned on). Stuff that even on 4G that took a minute or two to download only takes mere seconds now. The only few parts I hate about this phone are it doesn't have an, "Auto" feature under screen brightness which I solved by downloading the, "Power Toggles" APP, which not only gave me a software controlled, "Auto" screen brightness, it allows me to preset toggle brightness steps as well as many other one touch features. In dim or dark environments, when waking up the phone while in screen lock mode, the screen only flashes on for 2 seconds then turns off again. In bright or lit environments it stays on up to 5 seconds before turning off. While viewing photos in the gallery, the gallery sub menu doesn't stay on the screen as long as I would want especially if I want to delete/share/edit that photo. The sub menu drops down for less than one second in some cases and retracts as fast as it appeared so I have to tap or pull down several times to get it to stay long enough to hit the delete button. The left button (Menu) has been changed from menu/sub menu into a task manager on first tap. To get the menu/sub menu we have to tap and hold now. Also tap and hold on this button in gallery mode to make the gallery sub menu to appear but it too also disappears after a split second. Overall I am happy with this phone regardless of it's small annoyances. Biggest bonus was the included charger is now a 2.1A charger unlike previous chargers which were only 1.0A. It takes an hour or less to fully charge the phone.

  • please launch its lollipop update ...as soon as possible......

  • where i can find the radio in this cellphone? thanks.

  • No FM Radio in my SM-G386W with Telus... And with my searches all others SM-G386W doesn't have. Am I wrong ? HELP !

  • HSPA 21 or 42 Mbps ?

  • Operation rules are totally opaque. Whatever happened to menus? I totally question a phone system where you have to go online to learn how to do the most basic things. I'm not stupid, but it took me weeks to find out how to listen to voice-mail messages.

  • Anyone notice you have to hold the on button a long time to get it to turn on?

  • Bought in Canada for $200 bnib to replace stolen SonyZ3 in Cuba. Decent screen, you get used to the size. Camera shutter on the slow side but definitely serviceable. Not as zippy as a high end phone, but not laggy. Run Google Now launcher, which for some reason improves battery life which is just shy of a day with moderate usage. Biggest complaint is probably battery. No FM Radio as specified. Decent entry to low/mid level phone. Compared to motoG 2nd Gen it has LTE. Also looked at Motor 2nd Gen and XperiaM2.

  • Where can I buy this Samsung Galaxy Core LTE G386W ?

  • awesome phone to deal with just screen resolution must be improved!!

  • I had purchased this phone about 3 months now and I am pleased to say it's my best phone to date. I haven't had any problems yet and the battery life is AMAZING. Can't go wrong with the price also. I recommend this phone for anyone that's trying to save a buck and look good at the same time. Great job Samsung!!

  • Nice one, I like it. It much beter than S 3 except screen resolution.

  • Nice one, I like it. It much beter than S 3 except screen resolution.

  • looks like sm-g3815

  • Specs are all fine .... Why the hell just 720p video recording and poor Processor

  • Oh sweet god, another core...

  • overpriced..cant compete with other brand phones