Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus Review

Introduction:

The Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus is an heir to the Galaxy Ace, which was outed a year ago, upping the CPU speed to 1GHz, and the screen size to 3.65”. Unfortunately, it is keeping the same HVGA resolution that was all the rage in 2006.

It is not aiming to win any specs or design awards, but is it a decent player in the value-for-money category? Read on our review of this entry level Android handset from Samsung to find out...

Design:

The overall looks are decent, and still anything but a black plastic design would be a welcome difference. The Galaxy Ace Plus has tapered back made of shiny black plastic, where the 5MP camera with LED flash and the speaker grill are situated. This glossy plastic is a bit slippery, but the phone sits well in the palm, and the screen is small enough to reach everywhere with your thumb only, making the handset suitable for one-handed operation.



You can compare the Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The brightness of the display is good enough outside on the cloudy day we had, but it's not going to be very legible when stronger sunlight hits. Still, this can be said for many but the brightest smartphone screens, so it is fine. The colors are vivid, though, and the viewing angles decent. The screen's main disadvantage is the below average pixel density, which makes the interface look grainy, and letter edges jagged when reading. It is a 3.65” display with 320x480 resolution, resulting in 158ppi.

Interface and Functionality:

We have the tried and true TouchWiz 4.0 interface on the Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus, sprinkled atop of an Android 2.3 Gingerbread build. The contacts list integrates your buddies from Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as those from Samsung's ChatON cross-platform messaging service. Mum's the word on if and when the Ace Plus might get blessed with Android Ice Cream Sandwich, but performance with Gingerbread is very snappy anyway, without any noticeable lag – the 1GHz processor doesn't have issues powering the humble screen resolution. The phone sports 512MB of RAM, and 3GB of internal memory, expandable via a microSD card up to 32GB.


Samsung has included most apps that usually come bundled with TouchWiz, including the above-mentioned ChatON service and a file browser, but out of the usual Hubs that come with its devices, we only have the Social one to aggregate your social networking feeds, and various other communication channels.


Internet and Connectivity:

The browser on the Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus doesn't render the pages sufficiently well, with  checkered boxes appearing at almost every attempt to zoom in. On the flip side, it does support Adobe Flash, and runs embedded videos and Flash animations, albeit with slight hiccups.


The Galaxy Ace Plus sports 7Mbps HSDPA radio, plus Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and DLNA for wireless multimedia streaming. There is no HDMI-out port, so DLNA is a welcome addition, managed by the usual AllShare app.

Camera:

Pictures from the 5MP camera with LED flash come out in focus, but are a bit low on the amount of captured detail. The frames exhibit pleasant to watch, though warmer than reality colors, and bumped-up contrast.

The camera interface sports all the usual bells and whistles we have at most Samsung models, like Panorama mode and Continuous shooting, along with various scene modes. We have a separate Macro mode, too, tucked in the settings.

VGA video is nothing to write home about in terms of definition, but it runs smoothly with 30 fps, and was fairly sharp, with overly generous amount of contrast. Where it lacked a bit was in the detail department.

Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus Sample Video:



Multimedia:

The TouchWiz 4.0 music player is pretty basic, but overall functional, offering some extras like equalizer presets, and faux surround sound mode when a headset is plugged in. The loudspeaker is pretty average, both in terms of strength, and sound quality, but it does the job.


The Galaxy Ace Plus plays MPEG-4 videos up to 800x480, but it doesn't support DivX and Xvid formats out of the box, as we are accustomed to with most of Samsung's other Android handsets.

Performance:

Voice quality is not stellar on the Galaxy Ace Plus  - voices sound a bit muffled in the earpiece, and the overall volume is rather low. On the other side they could hear us with fairly good volume, but a slight hissing was present.

The 1300mAh battery of the Galaxy Ace Plus is smaller than the usual 1500mAh unit Samsung places in most of its Android handsets, and there aren't official talk numbers yet, but our superficial impressions showed that it fared no better or worse than other Android handsets at that level – a day and a half with moderate usage should drain your battery to its limits.

Conclusion:

The Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus would have made a more lasting impression on us as the first Android handset from Samsung for the year, if it wasn't for the almost insignificant upgrades from its predecessor. A year later we get the same design, lousy HVGA resolution on a slightly larger screen, and the obligatory 1GHz CPU.

Its biggest problem is the price though. While it is about the same as the original Ace, a year later the market can offer lots of alternatives. And there are better phones for roughly the same money – models that were more expensive but got affordable as they got older.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia neo, for example, is currently cheaper than the Arc, although it is better in any aspect. For about the same price or slightly more, you can get other better smartphones like the LG Optimus Black, or the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc (with better screen, svelte design and camera that records 720p video). Granted, the prices we saw for the Galaxy Ace Plus are introductory, and are likely to fall down quickly, but it will still not be worth it in comparison.

Software version of the reviewed unit: 2.6.38.6

Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus Video Review: