Samsung Ace Cell Phone Review - Imaging

Resolution (0.9)
To test the resolution of the 1.3 megapixel camera on the Samsung Ace we took photos of an industry standard resolution chat and ran the photos through Imatest software. Imatest produces a score called line widths per picture height (lw/ph), which measures how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start running together. The Ace did not perform very well in our tests, scoring 449 lw/ph horizontal and 674 lw/ph vertical. You can see below that this is by far the worst score put up amongst our comparison phones. We wouldn't expect photos taken by the Ace's camera to look particularly good once you blow them up beyond a cell phone screen.

Cell Phone	Samsung Ace	BlackBerry Pearl 8130	Nokia N82
Score	0.90	4.27	7.59
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	449/674	980/450	1307/1288
Image of Resolution Chart

Cell Phone	Apple iPhone	Samsung Blackjack II	HTC Touch
Score	4.18	2.45	3.56
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	970/879	742/894	895/1082
Image of Resolution Chart

Color (2.04)
To test the color produced by the Ace we take photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart. This chart displays twenty-four different colors and we use the Imatest software to compare the colors captured by the Ace's camera to the original chart colors. Below you can see the chart produced by Imatest.

Imatest also produces a second chart, which shows you how significant deviations from the ideal color are. Below you can see that the ideal color is represented by a square while the camera's color is marked by a circle. The long lines between the two indicate that the Ace does not do a good job reproducing colors. We saw significant error in almost every color.

Most telling is that whites are off significantly, indicating that this may be primarily a white balance issues. You may be able to get better color capture with the Ace if you fiddle with the white balance settings a little. You can see from the table below that the Ace put up the worst score amongst our comparison phones, combined with the poor resolution score this pretty much nails the Ace's camera as poor.

Cell Phone	Samsung Ace	BlackBerry Pearl 8130	Nokia N82
Score	2.04	5.13	5.45
Color Checker Chart

Cell Phone	Apple iPhone	Samsung Blackjack II	HTC Touch
Score	5.22	2.62	2.23
Color Checker Chart

Noise (1.42)
To test noise we use Imatest to judge the noise produced from photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels. We consider both the total noise produced at each lighting level and the consistency across lighting levels. The Ace performed reasonalby well in this test, for a cell phone. It's noise war relatively low at all lighting levels and fairly consistent across lighting levels. You can see from the chart below that the Ace performed better than our average phone, although you'll also notice that this still isn't very good. The reality is that no cell phone camera does well in this test because of the extremely small sensors used.

Live Preview (6.0)
The Ace's live preview does a relatively good job, with a few small drawbacks. On the good side we like that it uses the entire display. It also does a good job showing you what you're going to end up with and displays colors accurately. What isn't so good is what happens when you pan the phone around. You end up with a lot of trailing and blurring, which could give you trouble if you're trying to frame something quickly. This isn't a major issue if you're holding the phone still, however. Overall we think the large size and accuracy outweigh the issue with blurring while panning.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (5.0)
The Samsung Ace took 4.0 seconds to take a photo starting from the home screen unlocked. Although we should note that this entails hitting the capture button before you can see anything on the screen, so you're guessing about the framing. If you wait for the live preview to appear it takes more like 5.6 seconds. You can see below that the four second time, which we are scoring with, is right about average. Amongst our comparison phones we did see some better performers, however, including the iPhone and HTC Touch, both of which performed significantly better than the Ace. The reality is even at four seconds you probably won't be able to grab a spurt of the moment shot with the Ace, a dedicated point and shoot camera is almost always going to be faster. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shot to Shot Time (6.0)
Shot to shot time measures how quickly you can take a series of photos in a row. If available we use a phone's burst mode for this test. The Samsung Ace does have a burst mode and using it we were able to take six shots in three seconds, which works out to 2.0 frames per second (fps). This is a very good score, but it does come at a price in that photos captured with burst mode are take at 640 x 480 resolution instead of the full 1280 x 960. This means they probably aren't good for anything but looking at on the small screen of a cell phone. If you want to capture a series of photos at full resolution you'll have to do it manually, which takes significantly more time. As you can see from the table below the Ace's performance using burst mode was twice as fast as average and amongst our comparison phones only the Samsung Blackjack II edged it out, albeit barely. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shutter to Shot Time (6.06)
Shutter to shot time is the amount of time that passes from the point at which you press the capture button until the image is actually taken. On the Samsung Ace this took 0.33 seconds, which is pretty good. You can see below that this is faster than average and only the HTC Touch amongst our comparison phones did better. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Interface (7.5)
We liked the camera interface on the Samsung Ace. The entire screen is taken up by the viewfinder with white labels at the top and bottom of the screen showing you what the soft keys do and key information about the photo you're taking. Hitting the left soft key will let you review the photos you've already captured while the right soft key opens the menu system. The menus are arranged in a very camera-like fashion. It is a tabbed interface that drops down from the top of the screen.

Moving left or right lets you move between the tabs while up/down lets you choose the item you want from the current selection. We like that the menus are also translucent so you can still see what's in your frame while you navigate them. We like that the interface lets you get at just about any setting you want easily without taking up too much of the screen or changing the interface entireley when you enter the menu system. Too bad the camera's performance isn't as good as the menu system.

Photo Album Software Internal (6.0)
The Ace uses the same Pictures & Videos software to manage your photos that all Windows Mobile devices do. This software presents you with your photos in thumbnail view with folders showing up next to photos. You can create folders and move photos around from within the software. One small annoyance is that if you store some photos on the device and some on the memory card you will have to navigate between the two instead of the software grabbing all of the photos from both locations.

Photos can be sent via email or beamed via Bluetooth from within the software and you cal also print them via Bluetooth from the software. You can also save photos to a contact or set it as your home screen. You can play a simple slide show but you don't have any control over things like how long each photo is shown for or what transitions are used. Although we think Pictures & Videos is fairly functional album software we would have liked to see some more options and better overall management of photos.

Manual Control (0.0)
The Samsung Ace's camera does not offer any manual control options.

Zoom (1.0)
The Samsung Ace offers a digital zoom, which unlike many phones is available at the maximum resolution. Simply press up/down on the D-Pad to zoom in or out. Digital zoom basically just crops and enlarges what you're seeing unlike true optical zoom, so it isn't worth very much. As such we only award a single point for it.

Focus (0.0)
The Samsung Ace's camera is fixed focus, which means what you see on the display is what you get. We don't award any points for fixed focus cameras, reserving points instead for more advanced auto-focus cameras.

Flash (0.0)
The Ace does not have a flash.

Metering (2.0)
The Ace offers no true metering options, which allow you to control from which point or points in the scene light is judged. It does however offer you brightness settings, with five levels, which you control by pressing left/right on the D-Pad.

White Balance (2.0)
The Ace offers users the typical set of pre-set white balance settings including Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten and Flourescent. We recommend you experiment with them as we have serious concerns about the Ace's auto white balance as we mentioned in the Color section above.

Image Handling (5.0)
The Pictures & Videos software on the Ace does a good job with image handling options. Unlike most phones where you're lucky if you can change the file's name this software allows you to rotate, crop and apply an auto-correct to photos. The auto-correct function in particular is significantly better than what most cell phones offer.

Video

Video Quality (3.0)
The Samsung Ace captures video at a maximum resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and 15 frames per second. We were not particularly impressed by the test video we captured. We saw significant artifacting and blurring in the video, once you blow it up past it's original resolution it looks pretty bad. We wouldn't recommend depending on the Ace for video you want to show people on anything but a cell phone screen. We've seen worse but at this resolution we've seen a lot better from other phones like the Samsung Blackjack II.

Video Resolution (8.35)
In contrast to our impression of video quality above the Samsung Ace did very well in our video resolution test. To do this test we take video of the same industry standard resolution chart we use for the stills resolution test. We then run frames from this video through Imatest to produce a line widths per picture height (lw/ph) score. The Samsung ace scored 283 lw/ph horizontal and 295 lw/ph vertical, a very good score for cell phones. You can see below that only the Nokia N82 and it's VGA video capture performed better in this test than the Ace. We imagine that if all you did was take video of stationary objects without moving the camera the final product will match this score, but it seems that any motion either panning the camera or in the scene significantly reduces the quality of the video.

Video Compression (2.0)
The Samsung Ace captures video in 3GP format, which is a standard for mobile video. Unfortunatley this also tends to smash the video with compression and we imagine that the use of this compression format probably has something to do with the poor quality of video captured by the Ace. We would have liked to see the option to capture in a better format like Mpeg-4.

Interface (7.5)
The video capture interface on the Samsung Ace is very similar to the photo capture, which means we like it a lot. In particular we like that video capture uses the whole screen as a viewfinder. Too often we see cell phones shrink the viewfinder for video to a small postage stamp sized window. We like that the icons on the screen are unobstrusive and that the menu system is a tabbed format that is easily navigable. The major difference is that there are just fewer options for video capture than stills capture.

Manual Control (0.0)
There are no manual controls for video capture on the Samsung Ace.

Zoom (1.0)
As with still photos you have a digital zoom available to you when capturing video on the Samsung Ace. Given that the resolution of video is already significantly lower than a still photo the cropping and enlarging that occurs with a digital zoom is going to turn pretty bad video into even worse video fairly quickly. As such we only award a single point for digital zoom.

Editing (0.0)
The Samsung Ace does not offer users any video editing options.

Modes (2.0)
The Samsung Ace does not offer any video capture modes for MMS video, not surprising given that the phone does not support MMS. It does offer a couple of scene modes for cloudy and daylight conditions under white balance options, but nothing else.

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