The Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus is stepping into some pretty big boots. Its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy Ace, was one of the most popular handsets of 2011. It’s great to see Samsung trying to top their previous efforts, despite being horribly unimaginative with naming their phones. So, one year after the release of the Galaxy Ace, the Galaxy Ace Plus steps into the limelight. Just one question – why did they bother with a new name?
It would appear that Samsung haven’t really topped their first effort at all. In fact, the new addition to the family only matches the minimum specifications we expected last year. The Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus comes with a 1GHz processor, and runs on Android Gingerbread 2.3. The processor is enough to run the OS and TouchWiz, but we would have expected a greater improvement. All in all though, the interface is still colourful, customisable and intuitive.
There are also some interesting new features, such as the ability to black-list contacts. Yes, the Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus is most certainly a little elitist. It’s intended for ‘trendy and sociable young professionals’ – not untrendy, unsociable elderly slobs. Thanks Samsung, thanks a lot.
But on to the good stuff, and its 5 megapixel camera, which presents a good compromise between high and low-end models. It’ll do the trick for everyday snapshots, and it comes with an LED flash for low-light photography.
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections are also present, so you won’t struggle with connectivity. You can download all the apps you could want from the Android market, and share multimedia with all your friends. Well, with the purchase of a microSD card, of course – the phone only comes with 3GB of internal memory. We can’t be too critical though, as most mid-range handsets have an abysmal amount of storage.
Unfortunately, the phone’s 3.65-inch HVGA (320 x 480) screen is possibly one of the most disappointing features. Bear in mind that the standard for Android has been 800×480 up until now. You’ll see that the display’s resolution hasn’t improved, but – strangely – the screen size has. The result? Pixel density is even worse than before.
A 1300mAh battery rounds off the package – but again, it’s a decent size for this mid-range handset.
And that’s just it – the Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus is a great option for those in need of a mid-range phone. It’s affordable, but doesn’t stoop to low-end hardware. It’ll be available sim-free and on mobile contracts, and probably won’t cost more than £200.
All things considered, it’s meant to deliver affordability and functionality – you really can’t expect miracles in terms of hardware. But functionality doesn’t mean much without decent performance, and the Galaxy Ace Plus struggles in this respect.
You can enjoy plenty of games, but they won’t look that good.
You can browse the web, but sites won’t render that fast.
What Samsung gives with one hand, it takes with the other.
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