Samsung Galaxy Ace 2

Not everyone wants to spend a fortune on a top-end smartphone, and Samsung and the like – with the arguable exception of Apple – know that. At the same time, budget phones can make big compromises for price. The Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 is Samsung’s stab at the perfect middle-ground phone, it’s cheap on contract, and has everything that most people really need.

It’s smaller than the slightly more expensive Samsung Galaxy S Advance and it lacks the larger super AMOLED display of that model too, but it still has a respectable specification. It has an 800MHz dual-core processor and a 5-megapixel rear camera with an LED flash. Even though it isn’t super AMOLED, its display is still bright and colourful with great contrast.

Its interface has silky smooth animations and well-rendered icons. The usual Phone, Messaging and Applications icons are located at the base of the screen, and underneath those are three physical buttons: Back, Menu and Home. The smooth and responsive user interface, on a phone at this price, really gives the Galaxy Ace 2 a higher-class feel.

The Galaxy Ace 2 implements Android’s camera interface brilliantly. It has two cameras: a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and a VGA-resolution forward-facing camera. The forward-facing camera is great for Facebook snaps and video messaging, but nothing more. Its rear-facing camera, on the other hand, takes excellent photos for a smartphone, making it a great alternative to a basic point-and-click digital camera. It has a flash, a number of different shooting modes such as panorama, smile shot and geotagging. The camera interface is responsive and smooth.

The Galaxy Ace 2’s home screens are packed with worthwhile and useful apps that include a media player, photo editor and Polaris Office. We had no problem working with our test productivity documents, even those saved in the new MS Office file format.