Usually on an Android smartphone you need to root and install a special app in order to be able to take a screenshot or screen capture if you will. Not so on a Samsung Galaxy Ace GT-S5830 running Android 2.2.1 Froyo, as pleasingly it comes with a built in screen capture functionality!

To take a screenshot of your home screen or any other screen for that matter is actually pretty simple. All you need to do is press and hold the physical Back button on the phone, usually the button to the right of the big main button in the centre, i.e. the Home button, and while you are doing that, press the Home button just once. You will hear the camera snapping sound and if you release the buttons and browse through to your Gallery, you’ll see the screenshots under the ScreenCapture menu item.

Handy if you like pictures to go along with your app reviews or phone tutorials!

Just a note though, but sometimes applications pick up the Back button hold as a Back button press, meaning that the application keeps exiting or going back, making it impossible to take a screen capture of the screen that you need – to get around this, simply exit completely to the home screen, press and hold the back button, and then reopen the application whilst holding the back button down and browse through to the required screen. Then it is a simple matter of tapping the Home button to grab the shot.

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Nifty!