Samsung Ace Cell Phone Review - Making/Receiving Calls
|
Alfredo Padilla Published on April 29, 2008 Comment on this |
|
|
|
|
|
Summary
The Samsung Ace's keypad takes some getting used to, but is fast to dial numbers and the call features are solid. We would have liked ringtones to be a little louder, but we do like that you can use your own music files as ringtones |
Dialing Speed (6.8)
Dialing on the Samsung Ace is pretty speedy at an average of 2.94 seconds. You can see below that this is faster than average and comparable to the speed we saw from our comparison phones. We should note, however, that it will take some practice to dial a number on the Ace without errors.This is because the keypad is built into the keyboard and the buttons are small and packed tightly together. We found that when we first tried it out we would hit the wrong button fairly often. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Send and End Buttons (6.0)
The send and end buttons on the Samsung Ace are the largest on the device and sit on the far left and right of the control buttons. The buttons themselves are slick plastic, but they are slightly raised from the buttons that sit inside them. In combination with their large size you shouldn't have any problems hitting them when looking for them, even if going just by feel. The sheer size of the device, however, means that those with smaller hands may find themselves stretching a little to reach the buttons.
Call Management (7.0)
Call management features on the Ace are typical Windows Mobile Standard goodness. You can access a quick list of your most recent calls by hitting the send button or go to a more fully featured history by going into the start menu and launching the Call History. Here you get a list of all your calls with the option to save a number to your contacts. You can also send a text message from the history, view call timers and filter the list by missed, incoming or outgoing calls. This should provide you with all the information you need.
Startup to Call (1.79)
The Samsung Ace is very slow to start up, as is typical of Windows Mobile devices, at 55.9 seconds. You can see from the chart below that only the other two Windows Mobile devices were as slow, or slower, than the Ace. The BlackBerry Pearl, Nokia N82 and iPhone, were much faster, by comparison. The lesson here is that if you have your phone turned off and need to make a quick call be prepared to wait a minute or so. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Ring Volume (8.86)
To test ring volume we go through all the ringers on the phone at maximum volume and use a sound pressure meter to measure it in decibels. The Samsung Ace's maximum volume was measured at 88.6 decibels, which is pretty low. You can see from the chart below that the average cell phone comes in at 96.09 decibels and aside from the iPhone all of our comparison phones were also louder than the Ace. This leads us to worry about whether you'll be able to hear the Ace ring in a loud environment.
Ringtones (8.0)
Like all Windows Mobile Standard devices you can easily add your own ring tones to the Samsung Ace by dropping them into the My Ringtones folder. The device was able to recognize both Mp3 and WMA files, but not AAC. You can also set a voice recording made on the device's Voice Notes application as a ring tone. What you can't do is edit music files on the device to cut them down to more reasonable ring tone size.
Non Audio Alerts (7.0)
The vibrate feature on the Samsung Ace is a little strange. We had trouble feeling it in our pocket, but it is actually pretty loud. Now this may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how unobtrusive you want the vibrate feature on your phone to be. In this case we're considering how noticeable it is and even though the vibration isn't noticeable we would notice the sound it produces. If you happen to be looking at the phone when it rings you'll probably notice it as the screen lights up nicely with information about the incoming call. Overall we would rate the non-audio alerts to be middling. In particular we've seen better vibrates on other phones like the Blackjack II and the HTC Touch.
| Previous Next | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
