The latest edition to the Galaxy family is the Samsung Galaxy Ace GT- S5830, which packs quite a punch considering its middle-of-the-road specification and £199.99 prepay/£25 contract price point.
The Android 2.2 (Froyo) operating system helps this smartphone stand tall next to other mid-range touchscreen devices, such as HTC's Wildfire, which comes with a noticeably slower processor and older version of Android, 2.1 (Eclair).
The Samsung Galaxy Ace is the little brother to the powerful Samsung Galaxy S in many ways.
Aesthetically, you'll be forced to play spot the difference if you put it up against the iPhone 4, and will come to the conclusion that the Samsung is generally smaller, lighter and nicer in the hand than the iPhone.
However, in terms of sex appeal, the iPhone 4 wins hands down for its sleek look and feel, since the Samsung Galaxy Ace is a bit too plasticky. Interestingly, although the Galaxy Ace is smaller, the screen size is exactly the same as the iPhone 4, at 3.5 inches.
The screen quality is a low-end TFT, and is poor compared to the Super AMOLED screen on the Samsung Galaxy S, which allows for crystal clear video playback.
There's no HD video recording, but the five-megapixel camera works well as a happy snapper – it has several shot and scene modes, which can be fun to play around with.
Design and handling
The Samsung Galaxy Ace measures in at 112.4 x 59.9 and is just right in the hand.
It weighs a mere 113g, but its curvy backside clad in a textured ubbery material makes it feel much more secure in the hand, while also making it easy to feel for in your manbag or handbag. Samsung tells us that this meshed back cover will be featured on future smartphones.
The 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen is responsive, but the light behind the touch sensitive buttons on the bottom times out after six seconds, so if you haven't memorised what's where, it can be quite frustrating.
The frontage looks identical to the Samsung Galaxy S but with the added silver piping.
The top of the phone sports a 3.5mm jack and micro-USB charging socket with a sliding cover for added protection from dust.
There are very few physical buttons on this handset, three in fact, leaving us to rely on soft keys for most of the action. The power button on the right side doubles up as the screen lock and directly opposite on the left side is the volume rocker.
The third button is the main one on the front which takes you back to the Home screen (another similarity to the iPhone). The right side features the microSD card slot with a 2GB card thrown in, which is very small considering the internal memory is a measly 158MB.
It's quite slim at only 11.5mm, but not as skinny as the Samsung Galaxy S which is a tiny 9.9mm.
Interface
The Samsung Galaxy Ace runs on the Android 2.2 (Froyo) OS with the Samsung overlay, TouchWiz 3.0, which can be found in other Samsung devices including Android-powered Galaxy S and the Bada-powered Wave 2.
It sports four main applications (Calling, Contacts, Messages and Menu) at the bottom of the screen, separating these from the cavalcade of applications at the top, similar to that found in the iOS. (Yet another similarity with the iPhone. We wonder which smartphone Samsung benchmarks against…)
It also has a nifty task manager widget to help you keep your battery life optimised by showing what you've currently got running in the background.
That said, the battery life isn't bad as it uses a standard Li-Ion 1350mAH, which is used in other mid-range smartphones, such as the HTC Legend and BlackBerry Storm 2.
Another useful widget is the bar at the top enabling you to quickly switch on/off the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, sync as well as increase the brightness of the screen.
The Samsung Galaxy Ace comes with five Home screens, which is ample, but there is an obvious lag when swiping through them, which is down to the 800MHz processor. It doesn't quite stack up to the ultra-sleek 1GHz processor of its big bro, the Samsung Galaxy S.
Annoyingly, for non-gamers, there are a four pre-installed games that can't be uninstalled, clogging up memory and space on the menu screen.
Contacts and calling
Calling on the Samsung Galaxy Ace is a joy due to its ease of use and simplicity. Courtesy of TouchWiz 3.0, contacts are easily joined to Facebook, Twitter and Google accounts, which is a definite plus for the social media moguls.
Scrolling through the phonebook again highlights the slow 800MHz processor – the amount of lag can be irritating if you're looking to get to a contact quickly.
The History section of the contacts is handy because it not only shows your received and made calls, but also messages.
The volume goes up very high while on a call, which can be a blessing, but the higher you go, the lower the sound quality becomes – it's almost grainy at times.
Messaging
There aren't many fancy messaging tools with the Samsung Galaxy Ace, which is an advantage to a degree, since it makes it straightforward and easy to use.
Swype comes as standard for SMS, which is quite a handy tool for those one-handed portrait texting. It's good to use but isn't as intuitive as other standard predictive text messaging tools.
Typing in landscape mode is a far better experience, and you'll find you'll make far less mistakes.
Messages are displayed as threads, which makes it easy to follow a conversation.
Webmail and email are easy to set up and are fast to pick up new messages. The application is basic, but works well.
The Galaxy Ace also comes with a Social Hub app, which incorporates all messages you've received on different platforms including SMS, email, Facebook and Twitter.
On first glance, this sounds like an interesting tool, but when you use it you soon find out that messages on the social network platforms can only be read once the application opens up a web browser, meaning that it doesn't actually simplify anything
Internet
The web browser is embarrassing next to the Samsung Galaxy S, because of the screen quality. When reading text-heavy web pages, you have to pinch zoom quite some way in before you can clearly read anything, which is something of a chore.
It doesn't support Flash, so it doesn't have that advantage over rivals. Saying that, for the mid-range price the Samsung Galaxy Ace comes at, it's a fair compromise.
The web version of YouTube is better than the embedded application because you have much more functionality.
The bookmarks hosts subsections including most viewed and history to help guide you back to previously used websites.
Camera
Let's start with the bad news. The first thing you notice about the hardware is that there is no quick key to launch the camera for those sporadic happy-snap moments.
Another downfall is the lack of on-board memory (only 158MB) which means that the camera is disabled until the 2GB memory card that comes in the box is inserted.
But it's poignant to note that these drawbacks are not down to the camera functionality itself, which is actually pretty good as a quick shooter. In a dimly-lit room, the flash works well. Surprisingly, the Samsung Galaxy S, with all its bells and whistles, doesn't come with a flash.
There are a variety of shot modes to choose from, and most of them actually do improve the quality of the image.
OUTDOORS AUTO:
INDOORS FLASH:
INDOORS FLASH:
PARTY MODE:
LANDSCAPE MODE:
INDOORS NO FLASH:
INDOORS NO FLASH:
Video
The video mode is QVGA, sadly, and just 15fps, so enjoying your footage on larger screens isn't a great experience at all. In fact, don't do it.
Usefully, there's a a rolling memory count, which tells you how much space on that puny 2GB card you're lapping up
Media
Video and music files are stored in separate applications (gallery and music respectively), which means if you want to watch a music video after a music track, you have to come out of one application and into another.
Video files are arranged in date order in the gallery and play in landscape mode only.
The music application is very basic, enabling you to create playlists – and that's about it. The quality of sound is decent – the handset comes with Samsung DNSe, which features virtual 5.1 Surround Sound.
Battery life
The battery is a standard Li-ion 1350mAh and claims to run for up to 420 hours.
We were very impressed with the battery performance. While having used the fantastic navigation application several times and having applications running in the background for some time, we only had to charge the Galaxy Ace every other day.
Most modern smartphones can only manage a day each, so using a lower-power processor and reduced quality screen seem to pay off here.
Maps
Did we mention how good the Navigation app is? This Google Maps add-on really is outstanding. This version of Android enables you to download a voice directions plugin and, although the voice is very robotic, you can make that sacrifice because usability is top notch. You can search for directions by speaking the place (which actually works!), typing in, or selecting a contact's address.
You can choose to have driving or walking directions, both of which are always accurate, from our experience. The GPS signal never falters and, unlike some sat navs (including Nav free and Nokia's Ovi maps), Google Maps tends to always select the shortest route – and even knew some shortcuts that we thought we our own little secrets!
Connectivity
As mentioned, the GPS signal never fails when in dire need to directions and the same can be said about the 3G and Wi-Fi capabilities.
Just to exemplify this, the Wi-Fi even works in the furthest possible reaches of our house, with plenty of distance and several walls between us and the router.
Apps
The updated Android Market has a huge amount of applications to choose from and download. Inevitably, that means there are a lot of useless applications out there in Market land, since it's not as strictly vetted as the Apple App Store.
Social Media moguls will get bored within seconds of using the Facebook application because it opens to the news feed and doesn't have as many features as the iOS version, which has buttons within the application for a variety of functions on the social network.
The Samsung Galaxy Ace sports an FM radio application, which only works when headphones are connected and comes with a novelty analogue dial and four favourites. It's actually not bad when in good reception areas.
Samsung has even included its AllShare function here too; this allows you to not only stream to a big TV, but also browse and receive files on a nearby computer too - it works well, and lets you stream all manner of music and videos to your machine (although don't bother with photos, as the process of flicking from one to the next just takes too long.
Comparison
The Samsung Galaxy Ace is a great scaled down version of the Samsung Galaxy S for those who don't want to break their bank balance, but are unwilling to compromise on certain functions.
In a lot of ways it can also be seen as an budget iPhone 4, too, because you'll find many similarities in the OS and design.
Although the slow processor stops this smartphone from being a flagship device, it certainly does stack up against other mid-range handsets, such as the HTC Wildfire, and is a decent phone for the early majority (pardon the marketing speak).
Verdict
All in all, this is a great scaled down Samsung Galaxy S and packs a punch with the application rich Android 2.2 (Froyo) OS. To a large degree, Android 2.2 is this handset's saviour, because it's the reason for a lot of the great functionality. The 800MHz processor is a slight downfall as it makes for clunky, jerky movement and slow usage at times.
The camera is good for a happy-snapping device, and has lots of modes to choose from.
However, at £199 it's still pretty pricey - we'd have hoped for better for that money, and we think the HTC Wildfire S is going to blow it out of the water when that comes later in the year.
Alternatively, the Orange San Francisco, with it's superb WVGA screen and slick power (with a lower spec processor) is a better bet in our opinion - although the Samsung Galaxy Ace packs a better punch visually.
We liked
The 5MP camera with its variety of camera modes belies its low megapixel rating and manages to pull off some stunning shots for the money.The Google Navigation tool (and upgraded maps in general) is a real winner for the handset, and with traffic updates coming in the near future, it's only going to get better.
We disliked
The almost painfully slow at times 800 MHz processor - which is weird, as it shouldn't bring that much of a difference to proceedings given the relative power to its bigger 1GHz brethren.
Then again, it's not always about the number of Hz and more about the quality of the hardware, although the ARM 11 processor and Qualcomm MSM7227 chipsetare usually pretty reliable little bunnies when it comes to chugging through data.
Verdict
If you want to use this phone as your media hub, you're not in for much luck with the small memory and mid-range features.
But for the price point it comes in at, The Galaxy Ace certainly does stack up against the competition - we're not sure if it can weather the forthcoming budget Android storm (and it will certainly fall against the rumoured iPhone Nano) but for an attractive device with a decent Android overlay, you won't be disappointed with the Samsung Galaxy Ace.
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