Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 - Not the Best in the Milky Way

Samsung has really hit it out in India. Right from budget handsets with features that are value for money, to high end smartphones with everything under the sun! Another segment that’s pretty much dominating the scene is the mid-range segment. The South Korean company has declared the Galaxy Ace as their best in this category, but here’s what I think.

Form Factor
A first look at the Ace might result in a, “Oh it looks similar to the iPhone!” expression. And although it does (just a little bit), the Galaxy Ace has a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels which for some reasons fails to look as sharp as it should be. Not that it’s a big problem for viewing, but I would have been a lot happier with a better resolution. The screen is encased in Gorilla Glass that means it can sustain a few clumsy falls, here and there. Surrounding the screen is a glossy black finish with a chrome frame which gives the Ace a slick and classy look.

Aces in classy looks

There’s a 3.5 mm audio jack with a micro USB port for charging and file transfers at the top. The lock button and a hot-swap microSD card slot are housed on the right. Also, there’s a volume rocker on the left of the Ace. The fine textured back panel makes for a good grip and at 113 grams, the Galaxy Ace is definitely a very light weight smartphone.

Textured back panel gives a good grip

Overall, the build quality and design of the Galaxy Ace is nothing out of the box, but at the same time, it’s a simple yet a stylish handset.

Features

Interface
The Galaxy Ace comes with Android FroYo and Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0 UI on top and there’s news that the smartphone might also be upgradable to Gingerbread. The 800 MHz ARM 11 processor coupled with an Adreno 200 GPU handles everything very smoothly but I found that in a few apps like Angry Birds Rio, there were some levels that played sluggishly.

The Swype keyboard comes pre-loaded with the Ace and helps speed up typing, after you get used to it. The application’s dictionary is well equipped. There are settings for Swype that include auto spacing and auto capitalization. Plus, once you get accustomed to Swype, you can try out the Speed VS Accuracy bar where you can choose either faster and a little inaccurate words or slower but accurate words.

DNSe sound enhancement sounds awesome!

Once you startup and login using your Google account, integrating your phone book and Social Networking might be a onetime thing. However it’s still not a very easy thing to do.

Media
This handset boasts of Samsung’s DNSe sound enhancement technology and comes with a total of twelve Presets. There’s also virtual 5.1-Stereo functionality and in one word, the smartphone’s DAC (digital-to-analog converter) does an awesome job! It’s not very surprising that the bundled earphones are quite sub-standard, but I tried the handset with a pair of in-ear Creative EP-630 earphones and that’s where you recognize the true potential of the handset’s audio capabilities. For all FM Radio lovers, the Galaxy Ace has Stereo FM with RDS and the signal quality is really good, even in some closed areas. Other media options include a voice recorder as well as Google’s Voice Search application.

Watching videos is really comfortable

Coming to its video playback, I tried videos with different resolutions and in various formats like MP4 and 3GP. MP4 video files converted for your iPhone/iPod Touch played quite well and were comfortable for lengthy viewing. High definition videos on YouTube were also very comfortable to watch. With Rockplayer though (free off the Market) you’ll be able to watch almost all video formats.