The Galaxy Ace from Samsung is one of the best Mid end Android phones that has sold millions of pieces throughout the world. For its price, it offers reasonable build quality and good specifications making the Android experience a decent one, at an affordable rate. And Samsung has now brought the Galaxy Ace Plus, which is an upgrade to the original Galaxy Ace. With Android catching up with lots of apps and other features, the middle budget buyer is looking for phones which perform well overall. The Galaxy Ace plus comes with better specifications overall, and a better battery too. However, is it worth the upgrade from the original Galaxy Ace to the Galaxy Ace Plus?
Read on, as we take a look at the detailed specs of both the phones and compare them side by side, in every category:
Table of Contents:
- Form Factor Comparison
- Display Comparison
- Camera Comparison
- Memory Comparison
- Connectivity Comparison
- Operating System and User Interface Comparison
- Battery and Processor Comparison
Form Factor
The Galaxy Ace Plus is 114.5 x 62.5 x 11.2 mm while the Samsung Galaxy Ace is 112.4 x 59.9 x 11.5 mm. The Galaxy Ace Plus weighs around 115 grams while the original Samsung Galaxy Ace weighs around 113 grams, slightly lesser than its successor.
There are two capacitive touch buttons, the Options and the back button on the bottom with a physical button in the centre. Note that the Physical button in the centre does not function as a Five-way navigational Trackpad, it is just a single press button to make selections.
The Galaxy Ace has a 3.5 inch screen, while its successor, the Galaxy Ace Plus comes with a slightly bigger screen, of 3.65 inches. The Galaxy Ace Plus promises better build quality over the Galaxy Ace.
Winner : Galaxy Ace Plus
Display
The Galaxy Ace Plus comes with a TFT capacitive touchscreen of 3.65 inches with a pixel density of 158ppi while the Samsung Galaxy Ace has a similar TFT capacitive touchscreen of 3.5 inches and has a screen density of 165 ppi.
Both, the Galaxy Ace Plus and the Galaxy Ace has a moderate screen resolution of 320×480 pixels. Considering that the Galaxy Ace Plus has a bigger screen and that has been upgraded from the original Galaxy Ace, Samsung hasn’t changed the screen resolution and that remains the same.
Winner : Galaxy Ace Plus
Camera:
The camera unit is same on both the phones, a 5 Mega Pixel camera on the Galaxy Ace and Galaxy Ace Plus. Photos come out at a maximum resolution of 2592×1944 pixel, which was the same resolution of the Samsung Galaxy Ace as well.
Both the phones also haven an inbuilt face detection to go along with their respective cameras. Also, Both the phones do not have HD recording capabilities and shoot video at 480p, and also come with Geo-tagging for photos.
Both phones do not have a front facing/secondary camera and hence cannot be used along with third-party apps such as Google Talk, Skype, etc to make Video Calls.
Winner: Same Camera unit on both
Memory:
While the Samsung Galaxy Ace has 158 MB of internal memory, the Galaxy Ace Plus comes with a huge 3GB of internal memory, even higher than some high-end Android smartphones. Also, both the phones have a microSD slot that allows the user to add upto 32GB of storage to the phone, along with the existing internal memory.
Winner : Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus
Connectivity:
The Galaxy Ace Plus and the Galaxy Ace have GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 bands and HSDPA 900 / 2100 bands which gives maximum speeds upto 7.2 Mbps on HSDPA.
Both the phones have WiFi in them and support popular Wi-fi bands, compliant to the 802.11 standards. 802.11 b,g and n are supported and the WiFi Hotspot feature on them is also available on both the devices. To know how to enable Wifi Hotspot via tethering, follow these instructions here.
GPS is available on both the phones with A-GPS support for both. The Galaxy Ace Plus has the latest version of Bluetooth, v3.0 with A2DP support whereas its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy Ace has only the Bluetoothv2.1 with support for A2DP. There is DLNA support on both the phones as well.
There is microUSB support for for Data Transfer and HDMI output is not present on both the phones.
Both phones have stereo FM with RDS support.
Operating System and UI:
The Galaxy Ace Plus comes with Gingerbread 2.3.5 along with TouchWiz 4.0 whereas the Samsung Galaxy Ace comes with only the previous version of Android, 2.2 or better known as the Froyo. Though, GingerBread update for the Galaxy Ace has come out in few regions and can be upgraded directly using Samsung Kies software.
Samsung’s TouchWiz UI has been refreshed to TouchWiz 4.0 to provide better features, good looking Widgets and other improvements to the User Experience over the original TouchWiz 3.0, which is there on the Galaxy Ace. Thus, the Galaxy Ace Plus has a better Android User Interface.
Winner : Galaxy Ace Plus
Battery and Processor
The Galaxy Ace Plus has a 1300 mAh battery while the Samsung Galaxy Ace has a 1350 mAh battery. The Galaxy Ace Plus on 2G, has a talktime of upto 10h and 600 hours of standby timew hile the Samsung Galaxy Ace has a talktime of upto 11 hours on 2G and a reasonable 6 hours on 3G, with 640 hours of standby time on 2G and 420 hours of standby time on 3G.
It is tough to understand why Samsung has provided a battery of lower capacity on the Galaxy Ace Plus than the original one, as it has a much more powerful processor and display and thus will require more battery usage.
The Galaxy Ace Plus has a 1 Ghz processor and while the Samsung Galaxy Ace has a 800 MHz ARM processor backed by a Qualcomm MSM7227 Chipset.
800Mhz on the Galaxy Ace is just about enough power for the apps you’re likely to want to use but if you are more of a gamer or would do a lot of multi-tasking or web browsing, the Galaxy Ace Plus’ 1Ghz processor will be of good use as it will lead to a smooth experience.
Winner: Samsung Galaxy Ace ( Battery ) ; Galaxy Ace Plus ( Processor )
Conclusion
The upgrade from the Galaxy Ace to the Galaxy Ace Plus isn’t really mandatory, considering that there aren’t many significant upgrades in the specifications. But if you are looking for a mid end smartphone in the market, the Galaxy Ace Plus makes a good buy considering that it runs the latest version of Android and has a powerful 1Ghz processor. However, if you are very keen on the battery and would want your phone to stand for long, note that the Galaxy Ace has a battery of 50mAh lesser than the original Galaxy Ace, though such a small change in the battery capacity would not matter much during practical usage.
To know more about the Galaxy Ace Plus and order one, check out Galaxy Ace Plus here and if you are convinced the Galaxy Ace will suit you, then read more about it and order a Galaxy Ace here.
The Galaxy Ace Plus makes a good competitor to other smartphones in the category and is a good buy for the money.