Samsung Glyde Cell Phone Review - Making/Receiving Calls
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Alfredo Padilla Published on May 28, 2008 Comment on this |
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Dailing a number on the Glyde is slightly slower than average due to the lack of responsiveness from the on screen keypad.
Dialing Speed (4.93)
We were able to dial a number on the Samsung Glyde in an average of 4.06 seconds. The Glyde allows you to dial a number in two ways. You can press the Dial Pad button on the home screen and then dial using the on-screen keypad or you can slide open the keyboard and use the numbers along the top row. The latter was the faster method in our tests, using the on-screen keypad wasn't too much slower, however, at an average of 4.2 seconds.
dialing a number was a little slow
Either way it's slightly slower than the average phone, as you can see below, and is also slower than most of our comparison phones. Either method is slightly awkward compared to dialing on a traditional phone's keypad, it'll take some getting used to. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Send and End Buttons (4.5)
The send and end buttons on the Samsung Glyde are displayed on screen when you need them. The send button is located on the bottom left of the screen when you enter a phone number and the end button is located on the bottom right of the screen during a call. One annoyance is that during a call the screen will automatically lock, so you'll have to unlock it before you end the call. As they are on screen the buttons obviously don't provide any tactile feedback for their location, when pressed you do get haptic feedback as the phone vibrates a bit, but this happens with any button press and is not localized. This means you'll have to look for what you're doing on the device. The buttons aren't too small, but they're not as big as we would like. Those with large thumbs could easily hit another button by mistake. All this makes them harder to use than the real send and end buttons found on most phones.
Call Management (7.0)
The Samsung Glyde's call history can be accessed via the main menu or via the shortcut menu. We found it faster to use the shortcut menu as the main menu gives you an intervening screen that asks you what type of calls you want to see while the shortcut menu takes you to all your calls immediately. You can filter the calls you see by missed, received and dialed, which can be easily switched by pressing the arrows on the top of the screen to the left and right of the current view. The arrows are a little small, but we found that they could be hit accurately without too much trouble.
Calls are listed with the most recent at the top. Each items shows you the number you called and the time. There's also a little green phone icon on the right side of each entry, tapping on that icon will immediately dial that number. Tapping anywhere else on an entry will take you to a more detailed view for that entry that includes the date and duration of the call as well as the option to message the number or save it to your contacts. There are also complete call timers available including data transfer counters.
During a call the screen automatically locks, so if you want to access any functions you'll have to tap to unlock the screen first. The options available to you are arrayed along the bottom of the screen. The left button mutes the call, next to it is a speaker button and to the right of that is an options button. At the far right is the End button. Above these are the dial pad where you can enter another numbre if you want to create a conference call. Under the options you can access various phone features like messaging, contacts, recent calls and Bluetooth. There is no option to record a call, but aside from the call features are fairly comprehensive.
Startup to Call (3.94)
It took the Samsung Glyde an average of 25.4 seconds to start up and make a phone call. You can see below that this is faster than average and just about middle of the pack when you look at our comparison phones. What this means is that you won't have to wait for an internimable amount of time if you have to start up your phone and make a call quickly, but if this is something you do a lot you can do better. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Ring Volume (8.13)
To test ring volume we run through all the ringtones on the device and use a sound pressure meter to measure how loud they get. The Samsung Glyde's ring volume was not very high at ony 81.3 decibels. You can see from the chart below that this is signifcantly below average and much lower than almost all of our comparison phones. This means it's very likely that you might miss a call in a loud environment with the Glyde.
Ringtones (0.0)
The Samsung Glyde does not allow you to use your own music files as ring tones for the device. You also can't use sounds that you record on the phone as ring tones. If you want a different ring tone you'll have to go out and pay Verizon for it.
Non Audio Alerts (5.0)
The vibrate feature on the Samsung Glyde is not very impressive. We almost missed it entireley when the phone started vibrating in our pants pocket, we have no confidence that you'll be able to feel it in a jacket pocket or hear it if it goes off in your bag. If you happen to be looking at your phone when it rings you'll probably notice a call coming in as the whole screen turns on and displays the incoming number.
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