Review:
The Display: The display is all bright and responsive but not really that crisp what with the resolution of 320 x 480 which is a tad low for this display size. The display is bright enough but not dazzling like some other high end phones currently available. In bright sunlight, the legibility of the screen is not so good. But, that’s something which plagues all other handsets of this budget range. The pixellation can be seen on little bit of careful inspection which otherwise is not much noticeable unless you are degrading from a higher end phone with much better display. So, don't go looking for it and you won't see it ( or you might if you really look at screens the way I look ). But overall it gets the job done well, so no real reason to fret. The multi-touch enabled capacitive touchscreen is highly responsive, responsive even to a feather light touch which makes the phone very pleasant to play around with. The multi-touch inputs, accelerometer sensors etc. all combine for a very decent fluid experience. The display comes protected with a Gorilla Glass surface so we know that it won’t be too fragile. So, except for the resolution bit, this display is very pleasing in all respects.
Interface: The phone definitely seems inspired with the minimalistic design a la IPhone. It has one main home button and two other buttons which function as a Back and Settings button. It is rimmed with steely metallic sides which gives a very polished sophisticated look to the phone. At the rough glance, the phone could easily pass-off for its higher end sisters like galaxy S etc( a mobile shop owner asked me if this is Galaxy S ). The back cover has a nice honeycomb texture which is quite good to touch. It is made of easily pliable plastic and hence comes across as too flimsy. But this choice of using plastic is what I believe contributes to making the phone palm friendly at just 113g. The phone also comes with another smooth white back cover which wins some brownie points for Samsung. The phone feels neither too light nor too heavy and is just perfect weight wise. There has been definitely a lot of thoughts given to the placement of buttons. The power button and volume button are placed exactly where you thumb and middle finger would be when you are holding the phone normally. This makes for great convenience, but not always, as I ended up lowering the volume without intending to, whilst I was trying just to hold the phone. The buttons are a kind of a blip on the surface i.e. that they are barely raised from the surface and hence initially take some time to get used to. All this I suppose would not really matter once you get used to phone. Atleast, I got used to it.
Internal Hardware: Armed with 800 MHz ARM 11 processor, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset with 158 MB RAM, the phone is not at all laggy and a breeze to play with, except for very heavy multitasking, cause then the 158 MB RAM will prove to be a bottleneck and mar the experience.
OS: Well, the main highlight would be the fact that this a Android Phone. Android, a Google product, has become a huge thing and one can't do review of it here in few lines and do justice to it. To sum it in one line, Android is here to stay. Froyo OS is what that comes in this mobile. Unfortunately, no GingerBread update has been officially announced. Though, unofficial update is available on the Internet which obviously, would void the warranty. It is a legit fear as to whether this phone will ever receive a GingerBread update or not which works against this phone for now.
Telephony: The call quality and reception is good. No major issues any as such. The inbuilt contacts manager is decent without any unnecessary bells and whistles. The call-log has practically unlimited capacity.
Audio: But the speaker volume could have been louder as on the Nokia 5800. But still it is definitely on par with other phones on market. So, some people may be absolutely okay with the sound volume and I think it just boils down to personal choice ( for me, the Nokia 5800 is the benchmark here ). Equipped with a standard 3.5mm audio port you can pick up any of your 3.mm headphones and have a blast listening to music on this phone ( of course, only if the headphone is also good enough ), which comes with DNSe sound enhancement which is SamsungSpeak for some tweak that improves sound perception.
Messaging: The inbuilt SMS application with android is good. There are no separate folders but all the messages are setup in a thread format. And, this phone has Voice Input. So just speak and it will record and type it out. The great thing is that it works amazingly well if you are in a quiet enough environment. One could give up text typing largely for SMS if one is okay with using the Voice Input albeit with occasional correction. So, android really adds great value to the phone’s functionality. This is definitely a major advantage for moving from a lower end mobile without such feature.
Connectivity: This phone is 3G enabled with quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and dual-band HSPA supporting download rates of up to 7.2 Mbps. And for connectivity, this phone has Wi-Fi (b/g/n), Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP support and USB v2.0. So, one is serenaded with plethora of options, no complaints whatsoever in terms of options offered for connectivity.
Camera: Well if you don’t expect any magic from the 5 megapixel camera, you won’t be disappointed. Pictures in daylight come out great. It shows a great amount of details. So if you zoom in, you will be surprised to see more details in your picture, which is a huge plus. The phone records QVGA videos at a measly 15fps, which is barely passable. So if you are looking for a excellent video recorder as well, then this phone is not for you. And there is no dedicated physical camera button on the phone, which might be a spoilsport for some. But I don’t miss it. Pressing a physical button is bound to slightly jerk your phone and ruin the image unless one holds the phone firmly enough. Whereas the screen button doesn’t let this issue arise in the first place. So, this doesn’t let your treat your phone like an actual camera but to complain about that would be just pure nitpicking.
Applications: The phone comes with Thinkfree Office pack which is a document reader as well as editor. So, one need not look elsewhere to be able to read doc or PDF files on the phone. Other applications which come by default on very phone this day like a calendar, calculator, memo etc. all work well, one must add. If you are not satisfied, you can always look for alternatives on the web. The android market has grown tremendously. So, there is no real shortage of apps for this phone.
Battery Life: The battery life is quite good. For ordinary minimal usage, the phone easily lasts 2 days or more subject to the condition that you don’t have too many apps running in the background. And also ensure that the WiFi or GPS is switched off when you are not using it. Even for heavy usage like listening to music over headphones etc., the phone should last for a whole day which one has to agree is quite good for a phone. It is not so quick to charge as the Nokia 5800 though, comparatively speaking.
There is no perfect phone for anybody. One man's nectar is another man's poison. It depends on what one is looking for and how one uses it and also especially, how much one is willing to shell out. But for a mid-range android device, you can’t really go wrong by choosing the Samsung Galaxy Ace if you are in a limited budget range. Of course, for others who are willing to spend more have some other great gleeful choices to spoil themselves with. For mid-range buyers, this phone is definitely VFM, for sure.
2G Network :GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network :HSDPA 900 / 2100
Display Type :TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size :320 x 480 pixels, 3.5 inches
- Gorilla Glass display
- Multi-touch input method
- Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate
- Touch-sensitive controls
- TouchWiz v3.0 UI
OS :Android OS, v2.2 (Froyo), upgradable to v2.3
CPU :800 MHz ARM 11 processor, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset
Messaging :SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email
Browser :HTML
Radio:Stereo FM radio with RDS
Games: Yes
Colors :Black
GPS : with A-GPS support
3.5mm jack :yes
- DNSe sound enhancement
Phonebook :Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
Call records :Practically unlimited
Internal :158 MB storage
Card slot :microSD, up to 32GB, 2GB included
GPRS :Yes
EDGE :Yes
3G :HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
Bluetooth :v2.1 with A2DP
Infrared port :No
USB :v2.0 microUSB
Camera :Primary :5 MP, 2592x1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
Features :Geo-tagging, face and smile detection
Video :QVGA@15fps
Secondary :No
Java :via Java MIDP emulator
- MP4/H.264/H.263 player
- MP3/WAV/eAAC+ player
- Organizer
- Document editor
- Image editor
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail,
YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Picasa integration
- Voice memo/dial
- Predictive text input (Swype)
Standard battery:Li-Ion 1350 mAh
Stand-by :Up to 640 h (2G) / Up to 420 h (3G)
Talk time :Up to 11 h (2G) / Up to 6 h 30 min (3G)
Price: Approx Rs 15000
