Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 review: first look

Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 is successor of  Galaxy Ace and is a mid-range device. The Galaxy Ace 2 is a first mid range dual-core smartphone from Samsung.The Galaxy Ace 2 has grown up a bit on the outside, with the most notable change being the screen – it’s now a 3.8″ PLS LCD unit of WVGA resolution (480 x 800) with a density of 246ppi. Samsung decided to keep the camera resolution on the new Galaxy Ace 2 at 5MP, but they enabled 720p recording and added a front-facing camera too.

The internals held a pleasant surprise too – the dual-core processor runs at 800MHz and is well endowed with 768MB of RAM. The GPU is Mali-400MP, so as far as 3D performance is concerned, the Ace 2 should match the Galaxy S II.

Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 I8160 at a glance

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100 MHz, HSDPA 14.4 Mbps
• Form factor: Touchscreen bar
• Dimensions: 118.3 x 62.2 x 10.5 mm, 122 g
• Display: 3.8″ 16M-color WVGA (480 x 800 pixels) PLS TFT capacitive touchscreen
• Chipset: 800MHz dual-core processor, Mali-400MP GPU, 768MB RAM
• OS: Android 2.3.6 (Gingerbread)
• Memory: 4 GB of inbuilt storage, microSD card slot (up to 32 GB)
• Camera: 5 megapixel auto-focus, face and smile detection; 720p (1280 x 720) video recording at 30fps
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, stereo Bluetooth 3.0, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS and GLONASS, 3.5mm audio jack, stereo FM radio with RDS
• Misc: TouchWiz 4.0 UI, built-in accelerometer, multi-touch input, proximity sensor, Swype text input, 1500mAh battery

Design and build quality

The Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 resembles a compact Galaxy S. The phone remains relatively compact, despite the increase in screen size.

Speaking of the screen, it’s a very good phone and a major improvement over what Galaxy Ace is it’s  PLS LCD unit with a 3.8″ diagonal. The resolution has been more than doubled and is now WVGA (480 x 800) at 246ppi pixel density.

The image looks sharp, with very good viewing angles and pleasant colors. The brightness could’ve been better though and the screen is rather reflective, meaning sunlight legibility is less than stellar.

Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 has a great screen for the class

Above the display, there is the proximity sensor, but no ambient light sensor. There’s a new addition here too a front-facing VGA camera.

Below the display there’s an arrangement of three keys, typical for Samsung. The hardware home key is central, with two capacitive buttons on either side – Menu and Back.

The proximity sensor • The three Android keys rest below the display

On the left side of the Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 I8160 there’s the lanyard eyelet, the volume rocker and the microSD card slot, under a plastic flap. The card slot accepts cards of up to 32GB, so you can have plenty of storage even when the built-in 4GB runs out.

Camera interface

The Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 comes with a 5MP camera and a single LED flash. It captures photos at a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1920 pixels. There’s a front VGA camera for video calling too.

The camera interface is the same as on previous Galaxy devices with two shortcut bars on each side of the viewfinder. On the right you get the still camera / camcorder switch, a virtual shutter key and the gallery shortcut.

On the left there’s the front-back camera toggle, the flash options and the Settings shortcut. You can add a total of four shortcuts above the Settings shortcut – any four you like in any order.

The Galaxy Ace 2 has rich camera functionality – touch focus, scenes, geotagging, panoramas, smile and blink detection, effects and manual settings for things like ISO, exposure compensation and so on.

The old Galaxy Ace had a pretty impressive camera for its position in the lineup and the Ace 2 follows suit. The photos have an excellent amount of detail, they have very little noise, the exposure and white balance are spot on and the colors look good (with the usual dose of over saturation).

Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 camera samples

720p video recording

The Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 can capture 720p videos at 30 fps with its main camera and VGA videos with the secondary camera. The camcorder uses the exact same interface as the still camera. You can use effects in the videos, but there’s no touch focus.

Videos are recorded into MP4 files with a bit rate of 12Mbps, which is pretty good for 720p resolution. The accompanying sound uses the AAC audio codec, but is mono only (64 Kbps bit rate, 44.1 kHz sampling rate).The frame rate hits the 30 fps target easily and videos are very smooth. The actual video resolution isn’t outstanding – things look rather pixilated – but the rest seems to be quite OK.

Here’s a video sample shot with the Galaxy Ace 2 that we uploaded to YouTube. We’ll wait to get a review unit for a more in-depth look at the video quality.

First impressions

The definition of “mid-range” has been quite stretched recently.But the Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 I8160  offers an easy entry into the dual-core world, with a proven software package by Samsung and Google.

The video and music players deserve commendations as even some high-end phone choke on MKVs or don’t bother with FLAC support. The still camera is pretty impressive too and there’s a more than decent PLS LCD screen (which we wish was brighter).

The deciding factor on the future success of the Galaxy Ace 2 I8160 is price and, at this point, we can only guess.

2012

06/05

CATEGORY

samsung

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