Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus review: Aces wild

Introduction

The original Galaxy Ace S5830 did well for Samsung in the midrange. And, as we all know by this point, midrange droids are a force to be reckoned with, especially among users looking to move up from dumbphones without breaking the bank. Now, exactly a year later, the S7500 Ace Plus enters the fray looking to build on the success of the original.

Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus official photos

Samsung S7500 Galaxy Ace Plus official photos

It seems that Samsung has taken note of the major drawbacks found in its initial Ace offering, and provided improvements in many key areas, most notably a more robust processor and larger internal storage.

And while it is an improvement per se, VGA video recording @ 30 fps is nothing to write home about, considering the original Ace had that fixed via a software update. Now that Samsung upped the processor to 1Ghz. That being said, the Ace Plus offers a spec sheet that we would write home about, if, you know, we didn't have cell phones and such.

Take a look:

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA support
• 3.65" 16M-color TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen of HVGA (320 x 480 pixels) resolution
• 1 GHz ARM Cortex A5 processor, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm MSM7227A chipset; 512MB of RAM available to the user
• Android OS v2.3 (Gingerbread) with TouchWiz 4.0 UI customization
• Swype text input
• 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash; geotagging, smile detection3 GB of internal storage, microSD slot
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity; Digital compass
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• FM radio with RDS
• Document editor
• File manager preinstalled
• Samsung Apps brings a few nice apps for free
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor

Main disadvantages

• VGA video recording @30fps is nothing special
• No secondary camera
• No shutter key
• Average loudspeaker performance
• No ambient light sensor
• No DivX/Xvid video support out of the box

While there were no blatantly poor areas in which the original Galaxy Ace needed to be improved upon (besides the camera, of course), the updated processor, internal storage, RAM and slightly larger screen make the Ace Plus feel-and perform-like an upgrade.

Samsung S7500 Galaxy Ace Plus live shots

Android has seen many improvements since the Froyo 2.2 version originally found on the first Ace, and while it's no Ice Cream Sandwich, Gingerbread 2.3.6 runs absolutely glitch-free on the Ace Plus.

Coming up is our traditional hardware tour, where we look at the Galaxy Ace S7500 in detail.