For people who like to have a near as enough makes no difference computer in their pocket you have the Galaxy S II, for people who want a hardware keyboard you have the Galaxy Pro, and for people who want a smartphone on a budget you have what we’re reviewing right now; the Samsung Galaxy Ace. On top of being Samsung’s cheapest smartphone in their Galaxy line, the Ace promises to allow you to ‘live life on your terms’ (whatever that means do drop me a line, because I don’t) and also packs a 5 mega-pixel camera, the exact amount you receive in an iPhone 4. But is it any good? Well let’s find out.

Review: Design, build

Samsung’s Galaxy series of handsets are for the best part (or all part) mainly plastic, meaning they don’t offer the robustness of HTC’s unibody handsets such as the HTC Sensation and HTC Desire S. What Samsung’s plastics do offer though is a good quality, and unlike older generation mobiles, when trying to bend them they don’t creak at all. The same rings true with the Samsung Galaxy Ace, and thanks to the plastic design it weighs in at a very hand friendly 113g and measures just 11.5mm thick.

Aimed at the lower end of the smartphone market the Samsung Galaxy ace is aimed at people who live life on the go, and in this respect I love the fact that as well as the Galaxy S II having a textured rear surface, the Galaxy Ace does too so is surprisingly grippy even with sweaty palms. The handset itself has a 3.5-inch screen and a squarish case, however the display isn’t all that great with a 320×480-pixel resolution (although it is perfectly passable for daily web needs etc). Thankfully Samsung has included Gorilla glass on the display so scratching it is very difficult indeed.

Towards the top of the phone you’ll find a 3.5mm headphone jack and micro-USB charging socket with a sliding cover for added protection from dust, a nice touch which I always like to see within smartphones. The main thing that I liked about the Galaxy Ace was the dimensions of the handset, which make it extremely pocketable and in the eyes of my partner ‘cute’.

Features

As noted in the design above this smartphone packs a 3.5 inch display which runs at a 320×480-pixel resolution, and being TFT, it almost certainly offers nowhere near as a good a viewing experience as top end smartphones. In terms of expansion the Galaxy Ace supports up to 32GB via SD card, and the handset ticks along with thanks to a 800 MHz ARM 11 processor, which I do have to say does an adequate job at pushing along the software, Android 2.2 (Froyo) with TouchWiz v3.0 UI.

Other features out of the box include a 5 MP, 2592×1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash-totting camera . The camera itself is of a good enough quality, however due to the phones display, it doesn’t show off your greatest shots all that good. Once hooked up to your Mac or PC the camera appears to be of a good quality, and blowing the images up keeps them of a good quality for 4×8 print outs.

Software

As stated in the features the Galaxy Ace runs Android 2.2 Froyo, the most widely adopted version of Google’s mobile operating system. On top of Android Samsung has put it’s own stamp (as usual) on top of stock Android in the form of Touchwiz, which although not as exciting to look at as HTC’s Sense UI, does an adequate job of not slowing your user experience down.

Pricing

Sim-free you’ll be looking to set back £234.99 on Amazon for this handset, although on Pay monthly, you can pick this up for as little as £20 a month for a decent tarriff.

Verdict

I like this smartphone and if I was asked to choose between this handset and an LG Optimus One, i’d opt for the Ace. The one thing that really let me down with this smartphone was the display, because I mean come on, a TFT? That’s so last year (or 2 years, or more) however the one thing that redeems this handset, for me, is the price. Searching around the high street i’m very confident you’ll not be able to pick up a better phone for the price of the Galaxy Ace and always remember, you have access to well over 100,000 apps.