Samsung has an Ace up its sleeve for the sub $100 smartphone market

Samsung just announced a new low-end addition to the Galaxy smartphone lineup with the new Galaxy Ace Plus. Although there does not appear to be plans to ship it in the United States, it seems Europe and most other markets will be able to get their hands on the device starting this month.

The Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus packs in a 3.65-inch HVGA TFT display, 1GHz processor, 5 megapixel main cam with flash, and TouchWiz on top of Android 2.3. It also comes with 512MB RAM and 3GB onboard memory (expandable to 32GB via microsSD).

The full press release from Samsung is available after the break.

“Samsung Mobile is opening 2012 with the introduction of the Samsung GALAXY Ace Plus, which will help enhance the GALAXY brand following the huge success of the GALAXY S, GALAXY SII, GALAXY Ace and GALAXY mini. The GALAXY Ace Plus benefits from the Android™ Gingerbread platform and Samsung services, which provide a better mobile experience for more consumers,” said JK Shin, President of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics. “In 2012, we will continue to make every effort to create an easy and fun mobile experience by expanding our incredibly popular GALAXY smartphone range, which is now one of the most recognized and successful mobile brands in the world.”

New addition to Android-powered GALAXY portfolio delivers style, power and versatility

SEOUL, Korea – January 3, 2012 – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies, today announced the introduction of the Samsung GALAXY Ace Plus. As an enhanced version of the widely popular GALAXY Ace, the GALAXY Ace Plus is the smartphone for trendy and sociable young professionals. The GALAXY Ace Plus will be available in Russia starting from January 2012, and will be gradually rolled out to Europe, CIS, Latin America, Southeast and Southwest Asia, the Middle East, Africa and China.

“Samsung Mobile is opening 2012 with the introduction of the Samsung GALAXY Ace Plus, which will help enhance the GALAXY brand following the huge success of the GALAXY S, GALAXY SII, GALAXY Ace and GALAXY mini. The GALAXY Ace Plus benefits from the Android™ Gingerbread platform and Samsung services, which provide a better mobile experience for more consumers,” said JK Shin, President of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics. “In 2012, we will continue to make every effort to create an easy and fun mobile experience by expanding our incredibly popular GALAXY smartphone range, which is now one of the most recognized and successful mobile brands in the world.”

Style and power with expanded features

Building on the previous GALAXY Ace style heritage, the GALAXY Ace Plus is a stylishly designed smartphone contained in a modern and minimalist casing with rounded edges, featuring an affordably-sized 3.65’’ HVGA display. The phone has been designed to be simple yet elegant.

The GALAXY Ace Plus is backed by an impressive 1GHz processor and HSDPA 7.2 Mbps connectivity, providing all the versatility and browsing performance that today’s busy and sociable young professionals need. WiFi 802.11 functionality offers lightning-fast speeds for browsing, downloading and video streaming. Application startups are faster with virtually no lag time, even while multitasking. Additionally, an impressive 2GB of shared storage capacity for multimedia content and up to 1GB of direct storage for applications—more than any smartphone in its category—allow users greater content freedom and usability.

Running on Android Gingerbread and featuring Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface, the GALAXY Ace Plus allows users to handle mobile tasks faster and more efficiently. New music playback functionality features a play progress bar and the ability to view music tracks in folders. Call features allow users to reject calls with text messages or add unwanted callers to a black list log. For added productivity, users also have the option of using ThinkFree, a tool that enables viewing and editing of Office documents, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDFs, while on the move.

The GALAXY Ace Plus enables users to stay connected through Samsung’s Social Hub, Music Hub and ChatON services. ChatON, connecting all phone users—across any phone platform—into a single community using phone numbers instead of usernames and passwords, provides an easy instant messaging, group chatting and sharing of content in multiple formats—images, video, voice, contacts, calendar—to make messaging simpler and more intuitive than ever.