Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 Review

Introduction

Well, you’ve met the family, now here is one of the new kids on the block. Midrange Froyo deserts for all it is, and the Samsung Galaxy Ace leads the gang. In an attempt to bring smartphone sales even higher, Samsung is turning attention to providing a whole series of budget smartphones for the masses. And they’re not based on the Bada OS, they use Android instead.

     
Samsung S5830 Galaxy Ace official photos

LG has had quite a success with its Optimus One and Samsung is all in on the game too with no less than five different models. The Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 is the more powerful and it’s the one we are taking for a spin today.

The specs sheet is pretty much similar to the most Androids in its class – no AMOLED screen or high-end camera – just the typical HVGA display, decent connectivity and a hopefully, a satisfying snapper.

Samsung S5830 Galaxy Ace at a glance:

The Ace’s Android OS is skinned with the latest Samsung’s TouchWiz UI. You shouldn’t expect bonus apps beside the standard Android ones, since it’s a mid-range smartphone.

   
Samsung S5830 Galaxy Ace live shots

But when you’re buying cheap, you know you’ll have to make compromises – jump to the next page to see if there’s anything lacking in the hardware department.

Compared to the compact Star II though, it looks much bigger, but it’s still pocket-friendly.

   
Samsung Galaxy Ace next to iPhone 4 and Samsung Star II

Design and construction

Samsung has put no effort in experimenting with the Galaxy Ace design and there is nothing out of the ordinary. Quite the opposite though, after a quick look at the Ace you’ll notice the uncanny resemblance to the iPhone 4.

  
Samsung Galaxy Ace

The Samsung Galaxy Ace screen is bright enough with vivid colors (for an LCD unit) and has decent viewing angles and okayish sunlight legibility. There’s no ambient light sensor so the brightness isn’t automatically adjusted – there’s no handy brightness toggle in the notification area either. Like most capacitive touchscreens, the Ace is tuned to register even the gentlest presses and we had no issues with its sensitivity.

Above the display, there is the proximity sensor, which blends well with the surrounding surface.

 
A HVGA capacitive display is a good compromise between features and price • the proximity sensor is next to the earpiece

Below the display there are three keys only – the touch-sensitive menu and back buttons are on either side of a hardware home key. A long press on the menu key launches the search field, so in effect users have a dedicated search key. As usual, pressing and holding the home key activates the task switcher.

 
The three Android keys below the display

The only thing of interest on the left side of the Samsung Galaxy Ace is the volume rocker. It’s almost flush with the surrounding surface and is comfortable to use.

The power/lock key on the Samsung Galaxy Ace is placed high up on the right side of the handset. It is a bit hard to reach but Samsung has used this spot on many of their handsets, so it shouldn’t be much trouble for those who come from another Samsung smartphone.

The hot-swappable microSD card slot is also on the right, protected with a small plastic lid.

   
The volume rocker on the right • Power/Lock combo key and microSD slot the left

On the top side of the phone there’s the microUSB port (covered by a plastic lid) and the 3.5mm standard audio jack. As with any other Andrid smartphone, you can charge the handset over a USB connection.

 
The 3.5mm jack is on top along with the microUSB connectivity port

The glossy black battery cover of our pre-release unit is subject to change as the just released press photos show a different back panel. It’s got a matte finish and some sort of patterned texture.

The 5-megapixel camera lens and its LED companion are on same spot though. The loudspeaker grill is just next to them.The camera on our test unit was malfunctioning, so we won’t be able to provide you with camera samples at this stage.

 
The 5 megapixel camera lens is prone to scratches

Below the battery cover is the SIM card slot bed and the 1350mAh Li-ion battery. It’s quoted at 640 hours of standby (in 2G, 420 h in 3G) and up to 11 hours of talk time (in 2G, 6 h 30 min in 3G). We haven’t had a chance to test its performance though.

The 1350mAh battery can store a lot of juice

Samsung Galaxy Ace is reasonably sized and remains pocket-friendly despite its 3.5-inch display. It’s well built and the tapered edges make it comfortable to hold in the hand. Aesthetically, the only thing that bothers us is that the Galaxy Ace looks a bit like a cheap iPhone knock-off, rather than a Samsung Galaxy member with a distinct styling of its own.

 
Samsung Galaxy Ace in the hand

The galactic exploration of the Android OS starts right after the jump.

A Galaxy born with Froyo

Most of the available Samsung Galaxies are still shipping with the outdated Android v2.1 Eclair. The Android clock is already showing Gingerbread time, there are still current smartphones that only now are gradually moving up the ranks to 2.2 Froyo via an update. That’s to say that Froyo out of the box is still a novel factor and certainly a differentiating factor for the latest batch of smartphones by most manufacturers.

It seems Samsung’s realized the need to compete with LG Optimus One/Chic at the lower midrange level and is summing up the troops to go to battle. The Samsung Galaxy Ace seems to be a part of that military offensive and as such it comes with Froyo straight out of the oven.

The UI on the Samsung S5830 Galaxy Ace is skinned with the familiar TouchWiz UI. It’s nothing that breaks away too much from the traditional Android UI, but enough to make it recognizably a Samsung interface.

The customizations start on the homescreen where you have up to seven panes to populate with widgets but you don’t have to use all the screens all the time. If you need less, deleting the extra ones will speed up the navigation.

  
The TouchWiz 3.0 user interface comes preinstalled on top of the Android OS

The notification area, one of the Android strong points, is the same updated one as in the Galaxy 551 – it has four switches for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sound and rotation-lock.

 
The notification area and the lockscreen

Pressing the menu button at the homescreen brings up shortcuts for adding new items to the homescreen (you can also do that with a press and hold on the homescreen), add/delete homescreen panes, change the wallpaper (Live wallpapers are supported), a shortcut for search, the notification area and the settings menu.

 
Homescreen edit mode • Wallpaper menu

We noticed only one new widget besides the stock Android ones – Feeds & Update. It lists social network status updates straight on your homescreen.

Next, the Galaxy Ace has four buttons docked at the bottom of its homescreen, which stay there even when you open the menu.

  
The widget list • Feed and Update social widget

The main menu consists of side-scrollable panes, much like the homescreen, instead of a vertical scrollable grid (like in vanilla Android). You can add new pages manually, by dragging an app to a new screen in edit mode. A list view is also available, just as on the HTC alternative, Sense UI.

When the launcher is in edit mode, you can uninstall applications (only the ones that you installed) just by tapping them.

   
The main menu • edit mode

The Samsung S5830 Galaxy Ace software is responsive as it gets, with no lag whatsoever. You may notice small loadings at some places, but we bet they won’t exist in the retail unit.

Messaging capabilities and text input

The Samsung Galaxy Ace can handle all common types of messages with ease – SMS, MMS and email. Email support (via Gmail and Email apps) is excellent with support for Exchange out of the box and social media buffs will be pleased with the level of integration of that content as well.

Samsung Galaxy Ace comes with the Samsung home-backed keyboard preinstalled. It’s actually much more comfortable (and accurate!) than the often criticized stock Android QWERTY.

 
The Samsung’s QWERTY keyboard • the Swype-enabled QWERTY keyboard

When you flip the phone on its side, the virtual keyboard automatically switches to the landscape QWERTY, which is much bigger and better to use. It covers most of the screen however, leaving room for only two lines of text.

Voice input us also available and works quite good if you are in quieter environment.

Finally the text input is enhanced by Swype – we covered it thoroughly in the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S review and we won’t go into so much detail here. Swype is a life-saver on the smaller screens (such as the one of the Ace) – you don’t have to be very accurate with your swyping, which makes text input faster and easier. It’s only that, much like with any other text prediction method, it has to support your text entry language.

  
Swype input in action • Swype suggestions

Familiar gallery

The Samsung Galaxy Ace uses the standard Android gallery. The gallery automatically locates the images and videos no matter where they are stored. It even imports the online photos of your Google Picasa galleries.

The gallery boasts cool 3D effects and transitions, which we find rather attractive.

The albums appear as piles of photos, which fall in neat grids once selected.

  
The gallery certainly is a looker

Alternatively, you photos can be organized by date with the help of a button in the top right corner which switches between grid and timeline view. In grid view, there’s a date slider, which can also be used to find photos taken on a certain date.

Pinch zooming is also available here thanks to the Galaxy Ace multi-touch support but you can also use double tap or even the +/- virtual buttons.

  
Looking at a single photo

Zooming and panning is fast and smooth, but there’s a perceptible lag until the actual panning (or zooming) starts, which is slightly annoying.

TouchWiz music player with basic looks

The Samsung Galaxy Ace makes use of the TouchWiz music player. The interface consists of several tabs for the sorting options: current playlist, all tracks, playlists and albums, artists and composers. You are free to remove those you don’t need to make the interface easier to navigate.

We would have really appreciated the TouchWiz music player we saw in Galaxy S Giorgio Armani because of its better looks and Disc View option. We guess it’s reserved only for the Galaxy S lineup.

   
The music player has benefited greatly from the TouchWiz UI

Samsung has enabled equalizer presets on the Galaxy Ace along with Samsung’s DNSe technology.

  
Now Playing view • Landscape mode • settings

The nice feature that allows you to quickly look up a song on YouTube or via Google search is also here. The handset also prompts you to select whether to look up the artist, the song title or the album. What’s even better, the YouTube search results are loaded straight into the YouTube client.

  
Quick search options • Equalizer and DNSe settings

The web browser lacks Flash support

The user interface is completely minimalistic (it’s the Google way). All you get on the screen is an address bar and +/- zoom buttons. The address bar is placed on top of the page, so scrolling down moves it out of view and the zoom controls auto-hide – that’s essential for web apps because they need to have the whole screen estate to work with.

  
Browsing GSMArena.com on the Galaxy Ace

The Galaxy Ace browser supports three zoom methods – dedicated buttons, double tap and multi-touch pinch-zooming.

The browser supports text reflow – a moment after adjusting the zoom level, columns of text adjust to fit the screen width. It’s a huge boost to usability on mobile displays. That way you never have to scroll sideways to read the text on screen.

   
Page options and settings

You might have expected Flash support (we did, the Galaxy Ace runs Froyo after all) but it’s not here. A little known fact is that not all hardware platforms support Flash, even though Froyo does. You can’t do anything about it. The same issue plagues all entry-level Android smartphones such as the Optimus One and the Galaxy 551.

Sure, there’s the YouTube app but that doesn’t help much for other video-sharing sites or sites that use Flash for navigation.

First impressions

Samsung has already entered both mid-range Froyo scene with the Galaxy S Giorgio Armani and the QWERTY-fied Galaxy 551. The S5830 Galaxy Ace is the company’s first Froyo device targeting the largest group of users.

The Galaxy Ace is more powerful than the Optimus One. It has a bigger and more responsive screen, a faster processor and a better camera (at least on paper, the one on our pre-release unit was malfunctioning). The Ace’s connectivity package also features the Wireless N support. Unfortunately there is no Flash support.

There is no doubt Galaxy Ace will be a great performer and competitor. We guess, specs wise it would be closer to the Optimus Chic but we’ll pass our judgment later when we see the retail prices of both.

The Ace should be reasonably priced and we guess it will sell well. Our overall impressions are positive and we’re looking forward to our next meeting with a proper, retail Galaxy Ace unit.

General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100 MHz, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
Form factor: Touchscreen bar phone
Memory: 158MB storage, microSD card slot
OS: Android OS, v2.2 Froyo
Camera: 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with face detection; QVGA video recording
Connectivity: Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, FM radio
Misc: TouchWiz 3.0 UI, built-in accelerometer, multi-touch input, proximity sensor, Swype text input