A SIM free Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus is heading to the UK, a year after the original Ace was first released and while exact prices have not been confirmed the device will be available both SIM free and on contract.
Early indications suggest the handset could be as much as £499 SIM free in the UK. The Galaxy Ace can be bought for around£170 at the moment so a high price tag for the upgrade is highly likely,particularly in the first few months after its launch. One of the major carriers,O2, might not have indicated what the Ace Plus will be on contract either but bearing in mind the old Omnia still racks up a £379 price tag it’s likely your monthly bill will be around the £30 mark.
So far so standard but a big price tag makes consumers want to know what’s under the bonnet and the good news is this is advice that should more than hold its own in the smartphone stakes. A 3.65 inch screen and 480 x 320 pixel resolution may be on the average side now in terms of smartphones, but it will do the job. It is powered by an 800 MHz single core-processor with 3GB of on-board storage. There is a 5 megapixel camera with a flash designed to suit settings with low light levels. There is Wi-Fi and 3G,the device runs Android 2.3 and also includes Samsung’s TouchWiz interface making it easy to customize the device.
The Ace Plus is a big part of what appears to be Samsung’s strategy for 2012; making smartphones available for every price point in the market, much like HTC. Perhaps the SIM free price won’t be too expensive once its launches and there will be good carrier deals available because this is a solid little device that deserves to do well amongst the young, urbanity professional marketplace Samsung plans to pitch it at. Samsung shipped over a billion handsets in 2011 and plan to ship even more in 2012.
The Korean manufacturer has high hopes to corner ever angle of the marketplace and coming straight out of the trap with a solid mainstream device means they begin2012 in a strong position. This device won’t move Apple but it will HTC who already had a tough ride in 2011 and could be hoping to shift more of the irmid-level devices this year to try to gain some ground against the competitors. If Samsung makes a real splash in this section of the market is could spell even more bad times for HTC, and Nokia whose handsets so far
released under Windows Phone are reaching the very top levels of the market,instead hitting this top to middle tier.
The Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus will release in Russia before hitting Europe, Latin America, parts of Asia taking in the Middle East and then Africa and China. The staggered release seems to be the way to go for high profile smartphone launches, and looking at Apple’s results for the iPhone 4S who did the same thing through October and December last year, who can blame any manufacturer doing the same thing?
