Samsung Glyde Cell Phone Review - Imaging

The Samsung Glyde's camera performed reasonably in our resolution test, but color was all over the place. The interface was a little slow, as we expect from an auto-focus camera, but we were happy to see some advanced settings like metering and ISO.

Resolution (4.04)
To test the resolution of the Samsung Glyde's camera we took photos of an industry standard resolution chart. These photos were then run through Imatest software, which produces a score called line widths per picture height (lw/ph), which measures how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together.

the resolution of the camera was above average

The Samsung Glyde performed reasonably well in this test, scoring 954 lw/ph horizontal and 960 lw/ph vertical. This is above average for a phone and, as you can see below, only the iPhone amongst our comparison handsets performed better. The Glyde's performance was probablly assisted by its auto focus system, which makes sure the shot is in focus before capturing it. What this means for the user is that you can expect photos taken by the Glyde to be reasonably sharp, for a cell phone.

Cell Phone	Samsung Glyde	Palm Centro	LG enV2
Score	4.04	1.41	1.61
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	954/960	581/596	601/631
Image of Resolution Chart

Cell Phone	Sidekick LX	LG Voyager	Apple iPhone
Score	2.55	2.93	4.18
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	782/662	837.9/838.9	970/879
Image of Resolution Chart

Color (2.32)
To test the color produces by the Samsung Glyde's camera we take photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart, which displays twenty-four different colors. These photos are then run through Imatest software, which compares the captured colors to the original. Below you can see the chart Imatest produces showing the differences between the original and captured colors.

Imatest also produces another chart, which shows you how innacurate the colors really are. In this chart the small square indicates where the ideal color would sit while the circles indicate where the Glyde's actual captured color was.

colors are all over the place

You can see from these two charts that the Glyde did not perform well in this test, with significant error capturing almost all colors. In the table below you can see that the Glyde's performance was significantly worse than any of our comparison phones. It was also worse than average for all cell phones. What this means is that the Glyde's camera will not produce "true" colors for you. If you want to show off photos captured with the Glyde you may want to use a desktop program to adjust them first.

Cell Phone	Samsung Glyde	Palm Centro	LG enV2
Score	2.32	8.08	6.39
Color Checker Chart

Cell Phone	Sidekick LX	LG Voyager	Apple iPhone
Score	4.00	5.31	5.22
Color Checker Chart

Noise (1.47)
To test the noise produced by a phone's camera we take photos of the same color chart used above at four different lighting levels. We then use Imatest to analyze the amount of noise produced at each lighting level. Our final score takes into account both the total noise at each lighting level and consistency across lighting levels. The Samsung Glyde performed reasonably well in this test, noise was relatively low at all lighting levels, even in very low light, and it was fairly consistent across all lighting levels. Below you can see that the Glyde performed better than average and better than any of our comparison phones in this test. Take the word "better" with a grain of salt, however. You can see from the relativel low scores all around that no cell phone does particularly well in this test.

Live Preview (5.0)
The Samsung Glyde's live preview does not use the entire 2.8 inch display, which is somewhat disappointing. It does use a good portion of it, and is as large or larger than the live preview you'll se on a regular cell phone like the Razr2. The display does a solid job reproducing colors as they will appear in the final photo and provides a lot of detail without a lot of noise. We saw some trailing as we panned, but not a ton. Overall the live preview is good, but it could have been better if they had just taken advantage of the screen real estate available.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (4.0)
This test looks at how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we were able to take a photo. The Samsung Glyde's performance on this test wasn't particularly impressive as it took five seconds to complete this process. The Glyde's auto-focus had an impact on this as it takes awhile for the shot to be put into focus before you can take the photo. If you turn the auto-focus off you can cut the time down to 3.7 seconds, but you also end up with worse photos. You can see below that the Glyde's performance in this test was below average and only the LG Voyager amongst our comparison phones did worse. To be fair, though, the LG Voyager is also the only other auto-focus camera amongst this group. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shot to Shot Time (3.87)
This test looks at how quickly you can take a series of photos with the phone's camera. When possible we try to use a burst mode for this test and the  Samsung Glyde does have such a burst mode. The interface is a little strange, but we'll get to that in a moment. In terms of performance we were able to take four photos in 3.1 seconds, which works out to 1.29 frames per second (fps). This is better than average, which is impressive for an auto-focus camera, and you can also see that it pretty much blew away all of our comparison phones.

That's not to say that everything is rosy, however. The problem with the Glyde's burst mode is that it only captures images at a terrible 320 x 240 resolution. This means the photos you get are really only good enough for viewing on a phone. If you want to capture full two megapixel images in a row you'll have to do it manually, which means your speed plummets, mostly due to the fact that you can't turn off the option to review each photo as you take it. As a result it took us 20.6 seconds to take photos this way. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shutter to Shot Time (0.87)
Shutter to shot time is the amount of time it takes for a photo to be captured after you hit the shutter button. On the Samsung Glyde this took 2.3 seconds, including the time it took for the phone to focus. If you take out the focus time it's only 0.4 seconds, but we use the longer time for our score because it more truly reflects the experience that users will have as they try to take photos with the Glyde. This performance isn't particularly good, as you can see below, but it's a reality for auto-focus cameras. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Interface (5.0)
The Samsung Glyde's camera interface is generally well designed, but we do have some issues with it. Let's start with the good, the layout of the icons and controls on the screen is clean and easy to make sense of. By default you see a series of indicators along the top of the screen giving you information about the flash, resolution and number of photos that can still be taken. Along the right side of the screen are the controls with four buttons for Take, My Pics, Options and Back. The left side of the screen is left blank but you can choose to display additional indicator icons here from the settings menu.

the camera interface is well laid out

We found that the on screen buttons were not particularly responsive, something we noted throughout the Glyde's touch screen interface. Thankfully the dedicated camera key can be used as a shutter button so this isn't too much of an issue for taking photos. What is more of an issue are the controls for brightness and zoom. You can access these by tapping on the screen, which brings up two sliders, one for zoom at the top and another for brightness at the bottom. If you're at the highest resolution you'll note that the zoom is not active, something we'll discuss more below, but regardless of which one you try to use you'll find that the poor responsiveness of the touch screen makes it difficult to make the fine adjustments that both of these require.

on screen controls are difficult to use

The menu system is also somewhat annoying to navigate. Once you hit the options button you get a small square menu in the center of the screen. It is slightly translucent, which we like, but once again the touch screen has a negative impact as getting into the appropriate menu item can be something of a pain. Scrolling up and down the list can also be difficult, especially since you're working in a box that only takes up about on quarter of the screen. Overall the camera interface should be fine for those who just want to point the camera and shoot, but those who like to make adjustments will find it more difficult to use.

Photo Album Software Internal (6.0)
The Samsung Glyde's album software displays a simple 3 x 5 grid of thumbnails of all the photos on the device, whether in internal storage or on the memory card. Items that are stored on the card have a small indicator on them. At the bottom of the screen are two buttons, one for Options and another for Back. Under the Options button you will find shortcuts to take a photo, get new photos from Verizon or manage your photos. If you hit the last you can erase photos, move them, create a slide show and lock or unlock photos so they can't be deleted.

the album software is easy to use

The slide show features are pretty good. When you select that option you are shown your entire library of photos with small check boxes in the upper left hand corner. Tapping on a photo will add it to your slide show. Once you finished selecting the photos you are shown the photos in a grid with the options to set the slideshow as your wallpaper, change the order of photos, remove photos and preview the slide show. You can also change the slide show settings, which allows you to change the transition effects and the duration of each photo. You can then save the slideshow and access it later. This is a cut above what we see on most cell phones. What is missing, however, is more advanced organizational features like creating albums and sorting or searching.

Manual Control (0.0)
The Samsung Glyde does not have any manual controls like aperture priority or manual white balance.

Zoom (0.0)
The Samsung Glyde does have a digital zoom, which we would normally award one point for, but since the zoom isn't available at the highest resolution it won't receive any points. All digital zoom does is crop and enlarge what you're seeing and only being able to use it at lower resolutions means you end up with very low quality pictures.

Focus (5.0)
The Glyde's camera is auto-focus, which means that it will attempt to put the scene into focus before you capture a photo. This usually results in better photos than the fixed focus lenses that most cell phones come with, although it also has an impact on how fast the camera is as you have to take the time for the scene to be put into focus.

Flash (3.0)
The Samsung Glyde does have a flash, which is a nice feature on a cell phone. It's a simple LED flash, which isn't as good as the more powerful Xenon flashes we see on phones like the Nokia N82. An LED flash is really only good out to three feet or so, but it will let you take slightly better photos in darker environs. You can set the flash to go off automatically, for only one shot, always or turn it off in the settings.

Metering (9.0)
Metering controls from which point or points in the scene that light is judged. The Glyde has basic brightness controls, which we mentioned in the interface section above, and this is common on cell phone cameras. What is less common, but we still see sometimes, are real metering controls. On the Glyde you can set metering to Average, Center or Spot in the settings. Even more rare are ISO settings, which control how much light the sensor brings in. On the Glyde you can set ISO to Auto, 100, 200 or 400. Both of these options are less extensive than you would see on a real camera, for example simple point and shoots often go up to ISO 800 or 1600, but we're glad to see them nonetheless. We normally don't award points for ISO simply because we don't see it on cameras, but we decided to give the Glyde a bonus point for that feature in this section.

White Balance (2.0)
The Glyde has the basic presets for white balance including Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsten and Flourescent. What it doesn't have is evaluative white balance, which attempts to set white balance based on a white card.

Image Handling (4.0)
The only image handling features the Glyde has are the ability to rotate and rename photos. More advanced editing options like auto-correction or red-eye reduction are not present.

Video Quality (7.0)
The Samsung Glyde captures video at a maximum resolution of 320 x 240 and 15 frames per second. The quality of video produces is pretty good for a cell phone. Not as good as champtions like the Nokia N95, but better tha most cell phones. Colors were good and we could pan slowly without a lot of trailing or artifacts. Fast motion, however, did create something of a blur. The quality of the video is good enough that you can probably upload it it Youtube and it won't look terrible. We were able to blow it up to full screen on a 13.3 inch laptop monitor and although there was some pixelation it wasn't bad. We wouldn't recommend trying to view it on a television set, however.

Video Resolution (8.54)
To test the resolution of video captured by the Glyde we took a video of the same industry standard resolution chart we used for our still resolution test. We then ran frames from this video through Imatest to produce a line widths per picture height score (lw/ph), which tells us how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together. The Samsung Glyde scored 279 lw/ph horizontal and 306 lw/ph vertical. You can see below that this beats out the Palm Centro and LG Voyager by a decent margin. The LG enV2 also had very good video resolution and got a score similar to that of the Glyde. Our other two comparison phones did not support video capture. The Glyde also did significantly better than average, with a final score more than twice our average score of 4.17 (as of this writing).

Video Compression (2.0)
The Glyde only captured video in 3GP format, which is the standard used for mobile video. Although we were pretty happy with the quality of the Glyde's video we would have liked to see the option to capture in a format that didn't use compression as heavy as 3GP. Mpeg-4 or H264 would have been great.

Interface (5.0)
The video interface on the Samsung Glyde is very similar to the stills interface. Along the top you have icons for indicators like resolution and flash. On the right are four buttons to Record, access My Videos, Options or go Back. The center of the display is taken up by the viewfinder. One addition is that you have a timer at the bottom of the screen showoing you how long you have recorded video. Like the stills capture you can bring up zoom and brightness controls by tapping on the screen, but as we mentioned above making these find adjustments with the finicky touch screen is a pain, as is navigating the menu system.

the video capture interface is simple and logical

Manual Control (0.0)
There are no manual controls for video capture on the Glyde.

Zoom (1.0)
The Glyde does have a digital zoom avaialble for video capture, for which we award a single point. We're not fond of digital zooms as all it does is crop and zoom what you're seeing, and given the low resolution of the video capture this is just going to make your videos look terrible. We recommend that if you want to zoom in on something while taking video with the Glyde you just walk up to it, unless it's something dangerous like a bear.

Editing (0.0)
You cannnot edit your videos on the Glyde.

Modes (2.0)
The Glyde does have a mode to capture video for MMS messages. This sets the resolution lower and limits video capture to 30 seconds.

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