| If you are looking for an Android device that won’t burn a hole in your pocket, you should take a closer look at the Samsung Galaxy Ace. This phone comes at a reasonable price and it will offer you a number of interesting features, including a 5 MP camera and a 3.5 inch capacitive touch screen.
Design
The phone is very well designed and you will receive two covers in the package: one black and one white. You can switch between them when you get bored or you can simply use the one you like the most. Like with most Samsung touch screen phones, the screen is large and you will notice two small touch sensitive buttons underneath it and a normal button between them. The Samsung Logo is placed over the touch screen and a little bit higher, you will notice a sliver line for the speaker. On the other side of the phone, you will see the Samsung Logo once again, along with the camera and the flash. If you choose the white cover, you will also notice two black lines, which are placed on top of the speaker. The black version seems to be a little bit easier to hold due to the nice texture of the material. The phone is silver chromed on all of its side, which gives it a very smooth and attractive look. This is where you will find the lock key, the microSD card slot, the volume rocker, a 3.5mm headset jack and the microUSB slot. The phone is 112.4 mm long, 59.9 mm wide and 11.5 mm thin. This is probably the perfect size for a Smartphone because you will be able to surf the web without struggling and you will fit the 113-grams phone in your pocket without problems. The 320 x 480 pixel screen offers great quality for browsing the internet or looking at pictures.
Features
The most advanced feature offered by the Samsung Galaxy Ace is the 5 mega pixel camera. The autofocus feature will offer you great clarity and the LED flash will be useful for night shots. This might not seem much compared to top of the line phones, but it is a decent camera if you put it against other devices from its price range. You can also record 320×240 videos at only 15 frames per second, which is far from high definition, but good enough for a video phone. The quality of the pictures is definitely surprising for a 5MP camera. Even without tempering with the settings, this is a great point and shoot camera phone and the quality will be high even after you send the images to your TV or computer screen. Video playback is not that great, you should expand the memory with a 32GB microSD card if you want to download all of the music you find and take as many pictures as you’d want. Without this extra space for storage, you will have to make do with the 158MB of internal memory. The gallery is very well designed and browsing through pictures and videos is very easy when using this phone. You can pinch the screen if you want to zoom in or zoom out and the phone will recognize a few other gestures.
This phone has a built in GPS, compass, an accelerometer, and even a proximity sensor that will turn off the light when you move the device close to your ear. You can even connect other phones or devices to the internet through the Galaxy Ace, so this is truly a multifunctional Smartphone. If you have a laptop, you don’t have to worry about finding a Hotspot anymore, just pair it with your phone and you can surf all you want. However, there is no need for that because you can always go online directly from the Galaxy Ace. The touch screen responds to your movement fairly well, so typing an address and going through websites is not a complicated job. Once you flip the phone sideways, the full QWERTY keyboard will kick in and you won’t have any problems finding the right keys. The Swype technology offers suggestions, which are always dead on, so your job is even easier.
The operating system used by Samsung is called Froyp+ 2.2.1 and the Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset will offer 800MHz of processing power, which will keep the phone running smoothly and without any delays, even when you’re browsing the internet or running complex applications. You will also receive 278MB of RAM, which is more than enough for this device. All in all, you won’t feel the need for more processing power and you will never have to wait for the phone to open an application or perform any kind of action.
The Google apps suite will offer you various applications such as Google Maps, YouTube, and Gmail. You can download them in just a few seconds and you can also take a look at some of the other apps which will improve the capabilities of your phone. For example, DivX or Xvid content can’t be played out of the box, but there is an application for it. Unfortunately, Flash content is not supported and you won’t be able to do anything about it on the Samsung Galaxy Ace.
Pros and Cons
On the upside, this phone looks great and you will enjoy using it most of the time. The 5 MP camera can take surprisingly good photos and you will also enjoy browsing through the gallery. There is nothing to complain about when it comes to internet browsing, so the Samsung Galaxy Ace gets another plus here.
Unfortunately, this phone won’t record videos as well as you might expect. Also, the lack of Flash support is disappointing, which might be a problem for some people. If you overcome these two obstacles, this is truly a great phone.
Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy Ace is one of the best Smartphone in its price range. It comes with plenty of interesting features, there is little this phone can’t do, and the design is flawless. This is definitely a great device and you will enjoy using it. |
