Samsung Galaxy Ace vs HTC Wildfire S

We compare two diminutive handsets with the HTC Wildfire S taking on the Samsung Galaxy Ace.
Form:
Samsung Galaxy Ace - 112.4 x 59.9 x 11.5 mm, 113 g
HTC Wildfire S - 101.3 x 59.4 x 12.4 mm, 105 g
The Wildfire S doesn’t look very different from the original Wildfire, and that was never a particularly attractive handset in the first place – it’s stocky and a bit dull to look at really.

The Ace looks like a shrunken version of the Galaxy S but it’s been scaled down nicely keeping some fairly flattering proportions.
It has a much more pleasing look and a sleeker profile than the Wildfire S, which makes it look much more premium even if the spec is more humble.
Winner – Samsung Galaxy Ace
Display:
The Samsung Galaxy Ace’s display setup isn’t exactly going to get your pulse racing, it has a 3.5-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen at 320 x 480 pixels and 164 dots-per-inch (dpi). The TouchWiz 3.0 user interface (UI) is pre-loaded on the handset and other features include a reinforced Gorilla Glass screen, multi-touch input and an accelerometer sensor.
The Wildfire S’ TFT capacitive touchscreen is smaller still at 3.2-inches and has the same resolution as the Samsung but at a higher 180 dpi.
It features the same toughened Gorilla Glass and an accelerometer sensor and comes with the HTC Sense UI.
The Wildfire’s screen may be smaller but the picture quality should be noticeably better thanks to the higher dpi.
Winner – HTC Wildfire S
Storage:
HTC’s Wildfire S packs internal storage and RAM in equal measures with 512MB of each and has card support for Micro SD up to 32GB.
The Ace has only 158MB of RAM internally, storage is entirely on cards with up to 32GB Micro SD supported and a 2 GB card supplied.
Not exactly spectacular from either candidate but the Wildfire S does better here.
Winner – HTC Wildfire S

Processor:
While the Wildfire S’ processor is an upgrade from the original Wildfire, clocking in at 600MHz, but the Samsung is better provided for with a faster 800 MHz ARM 11 processor on the Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset, while graphics get a boost from an Adreno 200 graphics processing unit (GPU).
Neither is exactly earth-shattering compared to all the 1 GHz plus and dual core models saturating the market, but both use quality tech and are optimised well enough to give decent performance for what they are.
Between these two though, the Samsung comes out as the preferable handset.
Winner – Samsung Galaxy Ace
Camera:
The Samsung Ace sports a 5-megapixel primary camera with autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging and dace and smile detection. The resolution is 2592x1944 pixels and the handset supports video calling with video quality being QVGA. There’s no secondary camera though. Not a bad little setup at all and one of the handsets more standout features.
HTC’s offering has a 5-megapixel primary. It’s got LED flash, autofocus and geo-tagging, again there’s no secondary camera and video capture is VGA.
The Samsung offers more camera features, including the attractive prospect of video-call support, so it wins this round.
Winner – Samsung Galaxy Ace
Operating System:
The HTC runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread while the Samsung Ace comes with 2.2 Froyo, though it can be quickly upgraded to Gingerbread too.
There’s nothing between the two handsets here being on the same platform, they’ll both benefit from the enhanced multi-tasking as well as a faster user interface, smoother touch-keyboard.
Generally, Gingerbread is a big improvement over Froyo, so we’re glad the Ace is upgradable otherwise it would’ve fared badly this round, the only area we hope to see improving on Android smartphone builds in the future is the browsing which is still a bit clunky but the tablet version has shown Google know how to fix this.
In the meantime there are a lot of positives to Gingerbread and it’s a very useable and satisfying operating system.
Winner - Draw
Final Thoughts:
We’re not hugely enamoured by these ‘mini-phones’ and their lower specs certainly leave you wanting. In a couple of key areas the Wildfire S fares much better with its superior storage and display but it falls down on processing power, an important aspect in which the Samsung is quite adept.
The Samsung is more interesting with its faster clock speed, better camera and sharper looks but it might be frustrating relying on cards for storage, the screen is passable though even if the Wildfire’s is technically better.
The Wildfire does better overall in this contest but you may find yourself looking longingly at faster processors on other devices.