When the Samsung Galaxy Ace landed on my desk, for a review, a bunch of questions were running around like some high-on-sugar kids. First, why is it priced so close to the Samsung Galaxy S? Secondly, why is the UI not any different from the one on the lot less expensive sibling the Samsung Galaxy Fit? 

Look and Feel: Looks like the iPhone?
Look, there is no other way of putting this the Galaxy Ace looks a lot like the Apple iPhone 4. No wonder Apple is really grumpy about what they call the “shameful” copying of the iPhone 4’s design. While we wont get into who is right and who is wrong, but the fact is the similarity is uncanny.

However, what that translates into, for the end user, is a sleek, slim and lightweight phone. The build quality is quite good. The sides of the Ace have a chrome strip running around all sides, with a matte finish plastic battery cover. Back to the font panel, the 3.5-inch TFT display is flanked by generous use of glossy black. Below the display is the menu key, with two touch-based keys on either side. The top panel has the charging port, along with a 3.5mm audio jack. The left panel has the volume control button. The power button is the lone key on the right side panel, and quite a step different from the traditional placement of this key on the top panel of the phones. The rear panel has the 5MP camera, along with the flash.

While the build quality is quite solid, the fact that this phone is a fingerprint magnet- on the glossy front panel as well as the chrome-laden sides, takes some sheen off a good-looking phone. The use of touch keys is very much welcome, for they fit well in the entire touchscreen phone environment. 

Features: The midfield runner
Despite its good looks and a build quality that gives it the aura of a more expensive phone, the Ace is strictly a mid-range Android smartphone. The 800 MHz processor does limit the Ace’s power game to a large extent. If you are a power user (or suddenly decide to act like one!), and open 4-5 apps simultaneously, then the load will be visible. Having said that, we faced absolutely no problems with the Ace in normal usage scenarios. The interface is snappy, and does not feel sluggish. Quite an achievement, we must say, based on our past experiences with the likes of the Dell Venue and the Acer Liquid Metal. The two phones we have mentioned here have a 1 GHz and an 800 MHz processor, respectively, but felt sluggish right from the outset. At a price much lower than both, the Ace does do a good job of being snappy, but will be limited to an extent when it comes to flexing its muscles.

The 3.5-inch display is extremely disappointing. The TFT display, with a resolution of 320x480 pixels takes the sheen off an otherwise competent hardware package. First off, the display quality is the same as the Galaxy Fit, which is available for about Rs 12.5k. For someone who is spending about Rs 4k more, this will be extremely annoying. The display isn’t very rich, in terms of colours. The sharpness is distinctly lacking, bordering on minor blurred at times. In sunlight, the display isn’t going to be very helpful as you attempt to read an SMS or email, or even the number of the incoming call. Weirdly, Samsung didn’t load this phone with the auto-brightness feature. This is extremely rare, and the only other recent phone that committed the same mistake was the Windows Phone 7 powered HTC HD7.

The Samsung Galaxy Ace comes with Android 2.2 preloaded, with Samsung saying that there will be an Android 2.3 update soon. And true to tradition, the OS has been wrapped with the TouchWiz 3.0 UI. While the availability of 3 screens helps with widget placement, the UI just doesn’t cut it. While the Ace is the more expensive sibling of the Galaxy Fit, the UI is exactly the same. And for a phone that isn’t exactly a budget smartphone, this is unacceptable.

As far as applications are concerned, the phone comes preinstalled with ThinkFree office- and you have a word/spreadsheet editor available, out of the box. The Social Hub app allows access to Twitter, Facebook and MySpace updates, in one place. Apart from that, the world of Android Market awaits!

Read on to know about the performance, our take and the specifications of the Samsung Galaxy Ace...