Mar 22, 2011 18:31 GMT  ·  By

Orange will be offering the Galaxy Ace for free on select plans starting this month. The smartphone is currently available in the UK via Vodafone, Three and O2.

Vodafone is also offering the device for free on pay monthly plans from £25, while the Galaxy Ace smartphone is listed at O2 UK for Pay & Go users for as low as £229.99.

Announced back in January along with Galaxy Fit, Galaxy Gio and Galaxy mini, the device has been showcased at the 2011 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and debuted in the UK on February 21st.

Although it was tagged as a mid-range smartphone, the Galaxy Ace features a large 3.5-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen with 16 million colors and 320 x 480 pixels resolution.

It is powered by an 800 MHz ARM 11 processor, which is complemented by an Adreno 200 GPU (graphics processing unit), and runs under the Android 2.2 Froyo platform.

Even though the phone looks quiet appealing, Samsung hasn't made any comments regarding the update of the software, so the device might be stuck with Froyo with no chance of tasting Gingerbread flavor anytime soon.

The Galaxy Ace has 158 MB of internal memory, but users will be able to expand it up to 32GB thanks to the microSD card slot included. The handset's sales package also contains a 2 GB memory card.

Furthermore, the Galaxy Ace features a Swype keyboard, which makes text input a breeze even for those not used with virtual keyboards.

Orange customers will be happy to find that the device is also HSDPA compatible and offers Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity, DLNA function and GPS with A-GPS support.

Unfortunately, neither the carrier nor the manufacturer has made any comments regarding the phone's release date, but the phone is already listed on Orange's 'coming soon' page.