Samsung Galaxy Ace GT-S5830 Reviews

It was difficult to stem the increasingly aggressive steps with Samsung that its Google's Android. South Korean vendors are really ready for combat. New Weapon for this year again fired into the market, Samsung Galaxy Ace or GT-S5830 is one of them.

Design

The design of the Samsung Ace Galaxy is packaged in a glossy black candybar body and rounded corners but firm impression implies. At first glance, the Samsung is like trying to show something new through the Galaxy Ace.

This phone looks like a want to escape from the Galaxy before a family trait. There was something more simple and tend to adopt a style that developed the iPhone 4. There are significant differences in the rear casing is coated with a rough texture and finishing abrasive.

On the left side of the body just pinned the volume buttons. On the right side of the body embedded power button / lock key and micro SD slot that is hotswap. While the 3.5-mm audio port and port appear side by side on the upper side of the body Galaxy Ace.

This phone also has a proximity sensor buried in the top right corner of the front body. The position of this sensor is really subtle and barely visible. This sensor works like radar, to detect the distance between the screen with an object in front of him. When you call this sensor will deactivate the screen if it is near the ear.

Display & Menu

Galaxy Ace Samsung screen carries a 3.5-inch TFT LCD with a resolution of 320x480 pixels (HVGA). Relatively large in its class with sufficient pixel density. Injections of 16 million color display enriches the menu on this phone.

Thanks to a touch screen kapasitifnya, Galaxy Ace can be operated conveniently via the touch of soft fingers. Including good sensitivity and no special problems when responding to touch of a finger. In some features, this phone is already present multitouch features or pinch to zoom.

The combination of the Android OS 2.2.1 (Froyo) and support 800 MHz processor makes Galaxy Ace satisfactory acceleration. Navigation menus and execution applications has tended to 'smooth'. Transitions between menus or operation of the application process fairly smoothly. Only the occasional annoying lag that happens.

The performance of several supporting features such as accelerometers and kinetic scrolling in sight patent. Both are able to react properly and quickly respond to commands. Unfortunately, The accelerometer still not fully integrated and only runs on specific applications.

As always you'll find customizable homescreen with seven panels that can be fitted with various widgets and shortcuts. Homescreen can be reduced according to taste and it is actually quite helpful in accelerating the process of navigation.

It was characteristic TouchWiz that the main menu has a grid that displays the menu page is shifted to the side (the page can increase in number). Unlike some other manufacturers output Android phone that offers a main menu page in the vertical display is shifted downward alias.

One additional, Galaxy Ace already provides Swype-enabled QWERTY keyboard. Swype feature quite helpful in typing messages on mobile phones with small screens. You do not have accurate when typing, simply by drawing a line from one letter to another letter that it becomes wet nurse said.

Camera

Camera capabilities Galaxy Ace gives a distinct impression for PULSE. Strength of 5 megapixel, autofocus and flash features into its own power in its class. Competitors must worry. As is known, Android phones in general have a weakness in this sector.

Camera interface standard with a variety show features such as shooting mode, scene modes, white balance, ISO setting, focus mode, the effect to image quality. In this sector there is almost no significant difference with other mobile phone class.

Galaxy Ace seem to want to erase doubts about the ability of Android phone camera which is usually below average. To take pictures outdoors, this phone is capable of producing images with an accurate picture detail and color reproduction to satisfy.

In an indoor session, the images were no less biting. When tested photographing under fluorescent lights in the room, the images have good color accuracy and quite detailed. This is thanks to the synergy of autofocus and flash features optimal.

Unfortunately in the video recording, the resolution offered only 320x240 pixels (QVGA). The result records not so bad, but if too many moving images look broken.

Audio Video

The music player is still the standard Galaxy Ace TouchWiz UI. Interface consists of several tabs that can sort options: artists, albums, songs and playlists. Interestingly, Galaxy Ace already dibenami DNSe equalizer and audio technology to strengthen the sector.

Unfortunately, the resulting audio output from the loudspeaker phone is less 'kick'. The Sounds not produce powerful and less bass boom despite the position of maximum volume. Unlike when listening via the headset, the music that came out was more dynamic between bass and treble.

The phone also includes an FM radio as an alternative audio entertainment. Practical and easy to use interface but to listen to radio broadcasts needed a headset as a replacement antenna. Regarding the video player capabilities, the Samsung Ace New Galaxy can play the file with a standard format.

Internet

Talking about this, Galaxy Ace already support 3G/HSDPA network at speeds up to 7.2 Mbps. To surf more freely, of course, can even be used also as a modem for PC. Or if you want another alternative to using Wi-fi.

As Froyo Android based phones in general, in Galaxy Ace Wifi technology features supported Tethering and portable hotspot. You can share a mobile Internet connection from your phone to other devices over Wi-fi. Setup is easy.

zoming by double tap or pinch to zoom. Unfortunately, this phone does not support Flash Player 10.1.

Other Features

Some interesting features in this phone include Voice Search, enabling search by voice. ThinkFree, to view, edit and create Microsoft Word / Excel / Powerpoint. Even social networking features are integrated including Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Other than that, you still will be treated with a variety of distinctive features of Android. Starting from Google Maps, Navigation, Latitude and Places that supported the GPS. There is also GoogleTalk, Android Market, Gmail and YouTube plus standard applications commonly found in mobile phones such as calendar and calculator to the Samsung Apps.

Problem of internal memory, Galaxy Ace inserted for 158 MB of user memory for storing data and files. To accommodate more data, you can use MicroSD memory card slot with capacity up to 32 GB. Vendor immerse 2GB memory card in the sales package.

Conclusion

Galaxy Ace Samsung phones including the most powerful in its class. The screen is large, its capacitive sensors without any problems, the camera is good quality and adequate combination of OS and processor makes it stand out. One small note, the enthusiast virtual world can not enjoy Flash on its browser. (hp)

Pros: camera quality, 800 MHz processor, Swype text input

Disadvantages: the browser does not support Flash, the standard loudpseaker

New Price: USD. 350
Used Price: -
Network: 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 3G HSDPA 900 / 2100
Size / Weight: 112.4 x 59.9 x 11.5 mm / 113 g
Screen: TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Screen size: 320 x 480 pixels, 3.5 inches - Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate - Touch-sensitive controls - TouchWiz UI v3.0 - Swype text input method
Audio Jack: 3.5 mm Audio Jack, DNSe sound enhancement
Audio Features: Vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones
Speakerphone: Yes
Internal Memory: 158 MB storage
External Memory: microSD, up to 32GB, 2GB included
3G: HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps
EDGE: Yes
GPRS: Yes
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n, DLNA
Bluetooth: v2.1 with A2DP
Infrared: -
Cable Port: v2.0 microUSB
Rear Camera: 5 MP, 2592x1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
Front Camera: -
Video Record: Yes, QVGA @ 15fps
OS: Android OS, v2.2 (Froyo)
CPU: 800 MHz ARM 11 processor, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset
Browser: HTML
GPS: Yes, with A-GPS support
Messaging: SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email
Java: Via third party application
Radio: Stereo FM radio with RDS
Stand by: Up to 640 h (2G) / Up to 420 h (3G)
Talk Time: Up to 11 h (2G) / Up to 6 h 30 min (3G)
Battery Type: Standard battery, Li-Ion 1350 mAh
Video Player: MP4/H.264/H.263 player
MP3 Player: MP3/WAV/eAAC + player
Audio Record: Yes
Multiple SIM Card: -
TV: -

I hope my review of Samsung galaxy ace will be helpful for many people. I bough this phone from ebay india and got the delivery very fast in Pune from Udaipur vendor. (He took only 2 days to ship the mobile and 1 day was taken by the Blue Dart courier).

I went through lot web sites before finalizing this phone. It's a new budget phone from Samsung. I took this phone after comparing it with Motorola DEFY, LG Optimus One (waited for LG Chic for almost 3+ months) and compared it with HTC wildfire. Please remember this is not a high end phone and do not expect a premium features/hardware from this phones. I had a decent budget cap of indian Rs 15-16K (max $350 USD) and inside that budget cap I was looking for maximum features/facilities.

Phone came with headphones, battery, additional white color plastic back, a charger and USB cable to connect it to computer, 2 GB MicroSD card, leather pouch and manual CD's. I was wondering if i need to take a backup of my contacts but after inserting my sim android software very well integrated everything. I installed facebook, twitter apps and android identified correct people there numbers, facebook details and twitter details under one name!

On most of the sites there is incorrect information available about memory. This phone has 278 MB of RAM and 181 MB of storage. Phones graphic quality is very neat, clean and crysp. The touch response is very smooth and fast also you don't need to hard press to generate the required touch. Phone auto rotates the screen if you hold it horizontally. Phone really surprised me at first when the entire battery drained out in just 6 hrs. However I searched it on google on how to improve the battery life of android phones and I found good links to do the same. I turned off the other GSM network search and only limit it to 2G as I have idea sim card. I also installed a widget to enable/disable wifi, gprs, sync features in one tap. Reduced the brightness of the screen and in last 6 hrs I have only lost one battery bar! So i can assume it worked well.

I installed following apps: (Updated on 6 March 2011)

1. Opera browser - Far Better than default browser + Sync all bookmarks with desktop
2. Adobe acrobat reader - PDF file reader ( Better than ThinkOffice PDF reader)
3. barcode scanner - Scan any barcode and get info instantly
4. compass - Incase if you are lost
5. Google sky map - Visit universe from your mobile
6. twitter - For twitting from mobile
7. facebook - !!!
8. ASTRO file manager - Browser enter mobile file system
9. ConvertPad - Convert various formats to other formats
10. Air control light - I'm addicted to this game, land all airplanes on airstrip safely
11. skype - Call anyone over internet for free! ( Via wifi, your other contact needs to be on skype too!)
12. talking tom - My daughter loves playing with Tom
13. SeamanPlayer - Default player is good but this plays any format thrown at it!
14. Solitaire (With FreeCell) - Card games, just to kill time
15. Dropbox - Sync all files between desktop, laptop with mobile
16. Goggles - Identify/Search any product by just taking a photo of it!
17. xPiano - Play a piano on your mobile
18. KeePassDroid - I use this on desktop, laptop to store all passwords, works on linux, windows, mac and android one file on all platforms!
19. SoundHound - Search any song, details of it by just allowing it to listen for 15 sec!!!
20. GuitarTuner - Tune your guitar in case you have one!
21. Samsung IM - GTalk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo under one roof
22. Samsung EMail - Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, MS Exchange email under on app
23. Raging Thunder - Car racing game
24. Weather Widgets - This shows weather of my home town (Pune)
25. Instant Heartbeat - Gives your current heartbeat
26. Solo Lite: Again a Guitar tuner and Chord position helper
27. Stopwatch & Timer
28. AndroidVNC - To remotely control my home computers from my mobile.
29. World Atlas - Gives information of country.
30. Sky.fm radio - Awesome radio with lot of English music from various Geners
31. Lookout - To secure my phone from viruses and to locate it in case it is lost/stolen

all the mentioned apps are free. I also noticed that I can edit doc,xls, ppt files in ThinkFree office suite that came pre installed with the phone. Phone supports multi touch, phone supports youtube but not the flash that is embedded into websites. Headphone are optimized for better voice quality during call so they dont give great quality sound when you are listining songs, however when I plugged in my creative earphones sound quality was amazing.

Samsung also has provided a software that converted various video formats into mp4 that can be easily played on mobile.

Over all I'm very happy with this phone, considering the budget cap I had.

Here are couple of external links:

Gorilla glass video demo of Ace: http://tinyurl.com/3d9kdxg
Gaming performance of Ace : http://tinyurl.com/3ny39bg
Details of hardware: http://tinyurl.com/4xo72tw

Update [7-Mar-2011]

Based on request some more apps:
1. Smooth Calendar: - Calendar widget that syncs with google calendar
2. Aaj Tak Live - Live news on your android phone
3. Aldiko - eBook reader, manager
4. Angry Birds Rio - Full version of angry birds rio game
5. Android Status - Shows details of your android phone
6. Android Assistant - Shows details of process, cpu, memory, battery info with graphs
7. Blogger and Wordpress - Blog directly from your android phone
8. ESPNF1 and F1.com 2011 - Formula 1 racing news, live updates
9. Wapedia - Much better looking Wikipedia for android phone
10. Pulse - Coolest news reader I've used
11. Dictionary - Dictionary and Thesaurus access from dictionary.com
12. Flashlight - Use your camera flash as a torch in emergency
13. LED Flash - A bright bulb that glows on screen so that it can be used in emergency
14. Smart Battery Monitor - Monitor the battery health
15. 3GWatchDog - Monitor your GPRS data download's if you have limit on your plan (I have 2 Gb limit per month)

Update: 11-April-2011
Just upgraded my phone with the latest firmware. My earlier attempt failed when I did it from home. (Rather I should say I canceled it cause it was taking too much time and for my 64KB connection it was too much. so I did my firmware upgrade from office internet which is 12MB/s connection just took 15 min for entire process. )
First I updated my kies (Also imp I did the upgrade from my admin account as normal user failed to fetch and upgrade firmware) Connected the phone via USB and allowed kies to do the firmware upgrade. Attaching the couple of screenshots for everyone reference. At the moment I've no clue as to what new changes/fixes have been updated but I'll update my blog once I've noticed it.
Unfortunately I forgot to note down my earlier firmware version number, however the new firmware version is now PDA:KC1 / PHONE:KC1 / CSC:KC1 (INU)
To check your current firmware version dial *#1234#

Before upgrade: (Make sure you have Kies 2.x updated and not 1.5)

Click Image To Zoom

Right after upgrade was complete:
Now Kies shows the updated firmware version on my phone:

Update: 12 April 2011
After the new firmware update so far I have noticed that
1. Earlier my phone used to occupy 191-195 MB of memory that has gone down to 171 MB.
2. Battery life seems slightly improved.
3. Not sure if GUI speed has improved... my GUI was very fast from first day

Update: 22 April 2011
Gingerbread update 2.3.3 is coming to Galaxy ACE and the ROM just leaked here is the news
http://tinyurl.com/3vv8rhl

Added few more packages
1. SMS Backup+ - It back's up your SMS on gmail account with label as SMS and can restore it back if you factory reset your mobile
2. Fontomizer - I changed default font of the phone to Ubuntu looks great and more attractive now!
3. CallTrack: Track all your call history to google calendar.

Update: 3 May 2011

Improving Battery life:
Since everyone is concern about battery life let me update the blog for the same.
To improve battery do following
1. Always charge 100% and discharge fully all the way upto 10% - if you are not sure how much battery is left use some decent battery monitoring tool like "Smart Battery Monitor" Do not rely on default battery indicator as it does not give exact value
2. Turn off GPS and wifi when you are not using it, to do so click on option button when at home screen then notification and quickly disable the wifi and gps
3. Turn off network discovery like 3G if you are using 2G network. To do so click on option button at home screen then click on settings then "Wireless and networks" then "Mobile networks" then check the "Use only 2G networks"
4. Reduce the screen brightness to do so click on option button at home screen then click on settings then "Display" then "Brightness", set it to minimum as per your comfort.
5. Reduce running too many widgets on home screens they run in background all the time and can drain your battery
6. If you are using Facebook, Twitter, Skype or various email services, increase the time delay between the syncs like once in a day or twice in a day. Or in some cases do not run the auto sync instead rely on manual syncing.
7. Hold the center button for 3-4 seconds and start the task manager and close the running app if it is not in use ( ex: browser/radio/music player) tend to remain running even when you have stopped using it.

It'll be good practice to always carry the USB cable with you that came with the box, you can charge your mobile by simply connecting it to music system in you car if your music system has USB port! Also you can charge your mobile via computer/laptop by connecting the same cable.

I guess this should drastically improve the battery life. My battery is now lasting for more than day inspite of moderate use of browser,email and phone calls. Remember one thing android phones tend to drain battery bit quicker but its our fault as well, as we tend to use it more or less like a computer!

	Ace uptime

Update 15-May-2011:

Screenshot:
To take screenshot of your phone simply hold on back button and then click middle button, your screenshots will be stored into SD card under folder called screencapture

You always need not have to goto Market from your android phone, if your phone has wifi, 3G or GPRS connection on then simply goto http://market.android.com from your computer and make sure you are logged in with your gmail account. Select/Search application and click on install. App will get installed on your android phone!

Here is a cool apps that I found:
If you have always on internet connection and have a large music collection that you would like to access from your android phone simply goto your PC and signup to audiogalaxy.com and install the audiogalaxy app from market to your android phone. Now access your entire music collection from your android phone over wifi, 3G or GPRS.

Here is a very interesting article on New Android users and Battery complain:
http://cnet.co/jZZxvp

Video Samsung Galaxy Ace GT-S5830 Reviews