Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 review Ace times two
With the Galaxy S III busy grabbing the headlines, a midrange smartphone has been making its way to a number of markets without much fanfare. But you can bet the Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 wont settle for the role of just another sequel. It has a chance to prove the Galaxy S III is not the only superhot smartphone Samsung has released this season.
And its going to use it. Aiming to deliver 90% of the benefits of its extremely popular sibling for a fraction of the price, the Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 plays to the companys strengths and might turn out to be one of the unsung heroes of the year.
Dual-core might not be top-dog material in the Android realm any more, but its enough to run virtually all apps and give you a nice smooth sailing around the interface. The entrance of ST-Ericsson in the smartphone race has enabled Android OEMs to make sub-€250 smartphones, with specs that would be considered high-end on any other platform. Now who would say no to a bargain like that?
Key features
Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
3G with 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
3.8" 16M-color capacitive LED-backlit PLS TFT touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels), Scratch-resistant glass
Android OS v2.3.7 Gingerbread, planned Android 4.0 ICS update
Dual-core 800 MHz Cortex-A9 CPU, 768MB RAM, Mali-400 GPU, NovaThor U8500 chipset
5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geotagging, Multi Angle shot
720p video recording @ 30fps
VGA front-facing camera
Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS
NFC connectivity
4GB built-in storage expandable through the microSD card slot
microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
Stereo FM radio with RDS
Voice dialing
Adobe Flash 11 support
Accelerometer and proximity sensor
Main disadvantages
No Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box
All plastic construction
NovaThor U8500 is the least powerful of the dual-core offerings on the market
No screen and capacitive key haptics
The recent crop of inexpensive but reasonably powered droids also answers another criticism Android has been facing lately - that it fails to offer performance in a compact package. Sony was first to up the ante with the Xperia U and now Samsung is ready to rise to the challenge.
The Koreans have stepped up the pricing of their smartphone a bit, but they are willing to throw in a larger screen and expandable storage, so its going to be a pretty tough pick between those two.
