Samsung Glyde Cell Phone Review
By Alfredo Padilla
Reviewed.com Editorial Staff
Published on June 16, 2008
The Samsung Glyde is a high-end touch-screen cell phone available exclusively from Verizon Wireless. The device features a large 2.8-inch display and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The interface is designed to be used with your fingers, however, we found that in practice it is unresponsive and difficult to use. The Glyde is available for $199.99 with a two-year contract agreement.
You can dial a number on the Glyde using either the on-screen keypad or by opening the phone and using the dedicated number keys on the QWERTY keyboard. We were able to dial a number in about four seconds, which is just below average. The Glyde is not a smart phone and its organizational features reflect this. The contacts, calendar, and notes programs are all basic and there is no support for synchronizing with your computer.
The Samsung Glyde exhibited some problems in our audio tests. The audio received by the Glyde is too low in some places and too high in others, meaning voices may bounce back and forth between inaudible and too loud. Sound sent by the phone is just fine but side tone, the small amount of your own voice piped back into your ear, is significantly lower than we would like. What this means is that you may judge you are speaking too quietly, which could lead you to speak too loudly.
The Glyde sports a 2-megapixel autofocus camera which produces better-than-average photos, but has some trouble reproducing colors accurately. The Glyde supports Verizon’s V Cast music store so you can download music on the road. You will pay for the privilege, however, as a typical song costs $1.99, twice what it would cost from competitors like iTunes. The music software is slow to load and is hampered by the fact that you can’t have music playing in the background while you do something else on the device. The Glyde supports Micro SD cards up to 8GB for storing multimedia.
Our biggest issue with the Glyde is the unresponsive touch screen interface. We found ourselves tapping the same on-screen button as many as five or six times before the screen would register our touch. This is in sharp contrast to the performance of other touch-screen devices like the iPhone or the Palm Centro. The software interface on the Glyde is reasonably well designed, so users shouldn’t have too much trouble learning how to get around.
The device sports an advanced web browser that allows you to view full web pages, however a combination of the difficult-to-use touch-screen and a narrow viewing pane for content make it hard to use. Despite sporting a full QWERTY keyboard, with which we’re able to manage 40 words per minute, the Glyde does not include an e-mail client. Instead you have to use web-based e-mail services.
The Glyde comes with a couple of extras that may be of interest to customers. The first is GPS functionality, although we should note that you’ll need to pay for Verizon’s GPS software in order to use this function. The second is support for Verizon’s V Cast TV service, which gives you access to broadcast TV in the select markets where the service is available.
The Samsung Glyde’s talk time came out to 4 hours and 53 minutes in our test. This is just about average performance and should be sufficient for most users. Music playback time is above average at almost 10 hours, while web browsing time is also better than average at just more than 5 hours. Battery life shouldn’t be an issue on the Glyde for all but the heaviest users.
At $200 with a contract, the Samsung Glyde can be considered a high-end device, and its support for advanced features like GPS and a full web browser justify this to some extent. Unfortunately the Glyde is let down by its most prominent feature, the touch-screen interface. Lacking any other way to interact with the interface users are forced to use a touch-screen that we found unresponsive and inaccurate. The result is that you can spend less for a device like the LG enV2 or the Palm Centro and get a device as capable, or more, that is much less frustrating to use.For a more in-depth review, visit the Samsung Glyde Review at our partner WirelessInfo.com
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