I was looking to purchase a budget smartphone on pay as you go that looked stylish and could download apps on. I stumbled across the Samsung Galaxy Ace retailing at £79.99 and decided to go for it.

The phone itself was an upgrade from an old broken iphone 3G. When took the galaxy ace from the box I noticed how lightweight it was. I went through the initial charging process and started up the phone for the first time. For me, Samsung just seems to 'click' I feel it is easy to find my way around the menu system, going through the settings and accessing the internet.

The phone seems automatic in detecting your wifi and syncing your existing contacts so it was really easy to get up to speed. One thing I was particularly pleased with was the look and feel of the Samsung app store as opposed to itunes that I used previously. Despite what others say, I could find my way around the menus far easier than I did on itunes.

The phone includes a 5 MegaPixel camera that generates good images. One problem I found tricky was pointing the camera at myself to take photos of my smiley facy in front of nice scenery. At that crucial moment its hard on a touch screen to feel for the tiny 'camera click' image to actually take the photo! It usually takes me 4 or 5 attempts to hit the right spot! I think there is an option for timer but for that instant moment when you want to take a picture it can be a little fiddly to find the timer option.

The dropbox app built in is simple to use and syncs to any other media with the app installed so you dont have to upload pictures to a computer by USB (although a USB lead is supplied).

Speakers on the phone seem good and clear whether on the phone or playing music. Volume buttons on the upper left side of the phone are easy to feel for as with the power button on the right hand side.

The phone itself comes with 2 cases, a black textured case or a shiny white one. Whilst the black is grippy and looks stylish, the spare white one looks a little tacky so I left it in the box.

It is worth putting a screen protector on the phone. The one I bought wasn't necessarily designed for the phone but I had a few problems with the proximity sensor not recognising it as a screen protector and kept turning the screen off during a phone call and not tuening the screen on again when I moved my face away. not a problem with the phone but more the screen protector but bear this in mind when choosing a screen protector.

The pixels look nice and clear on the Galaxy Ace. Maybe not quite as good as some higher priced models but for the price you pay for the model it is acceptable. Battery life is good, I tend to get 2 days out of it before I need to recharge overnight.

My main concern with this phone is the storage space built into the phone. Whilst you can add a memory card to the phone to store pictures or music on, many apps will only install to the phone itself. I found that after installing apps like Dropbox, Twitter and Facebook, the phone seemed sluggish whilst opeining the internet or using the menus. I think if you install these apps then you can probably install only a couple more apps onto the built in memory until you run into these problems. Some apps have an option to install to memory card which I recommend doing if possible.

Because of this I feel I have got all the use out of this phone that I am likely to get before needing to upgrade again. If I want to add a new app then I will need to uninstall an old one, and with constant updates on apps these days I imagine this will get worse over time.

All in all, this phone does the job considering the price bracket of £80. It's not top of the range but still includes all the features these phones do. It is a smart phone, its downfall being that it can only handle 181MB of storage.