Samsung Galaxy Ace review

No matter how many new headline-leading features are introduced to the increasingly smart range of smartphones, the core base of a handset will always be its ability to make and receive telephone calls.

On this front, the Samsung Galaxy Ace is a combination of acceptable and slightly disappointing abilities, with the standard Android array of contacts and calling menus once again proving easy to navigate, simple to set up and modify.

Courtesy of TouchWiz 3.0, contacts are easily joined to Facebook, Twitter and Google accounts, which is a definite plus for the social media moguls.

The History section of the contacts is handy because it not only shows your received and made calls, but also messages.

When making calls, however, the Samsung Galaxy Ace fails to come into its own. It offers a mildly disappointing communication experience that, while impressive in some areas, falls far short of expectations and the desired ideal in others.

Although offering good isolation of the contact's voice during calls, removing background noise and unwanted sounds well, the resulting in-ear factor is a very distant, slightly muffled and echoey sound.

This can make hearing your desired contact's comments a little harder that necessary, even when volume options are pushed to their maximum limits.

Thanks again in part to the handset's sometimes questionable screen responsiveness, answering incoming calls via the Android standard swipe to answer method can take a couple of attempts. This adds yet another unnecessary issue to the handset's arsenal that after a few occurrences begins to grate on your patience.