Samsung Glyde Cell Phone Review - Organizer
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Alfredo Padilla Published on May 28, 2008 Comment on this |
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The Samsung Glyde's organizer software is standard fare for a regular cell phone. It'll do the job for light tasks, but is not powerful enough to challenge a PDA or smart phone.
Synchronization (0.0)
Despite coming with a data cable the Samsung Glyde does not support synchronization of your personal information between the phone and a computer.
Alerts (6.5)
Alerts can be set on the Samsung Glyde for calendar appointments. By default the alert goes off at the time the appointment occurs, but it can also be set for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours, 5 hours or 1 day before. For each alert you can also choose the ringtone that sounds as well as vibrate only or light only. When an alert sounds it will go off for one minute, with the entire screen lighting up and the option to view it now or later, the latter basically acting as a dismiss rather than a snooze. There's also the ability to set a reminder for an event, with the options of once, every 2 minutes or every 15 minutes. What this means, if you're confused like we were, is that this is how often the alert will continue to sound if you miss it. We liked the flexibility to set our own tone for each alert and the preset options for the reminders were pretty good as are the ability to set your own reminder interval, something not often seen on phones.
Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
The Samsung Glyde does not support synchronization of your personal information over the air.
Adding Contacts (5.02)
It took us an average of 19.94 seconds to add a new contact to the Samsung Glyde. You can see below that this is just slightly slower than average and similar to the times we got from the Sidekick LX and iPhone. You'll also note, however, that we have some comparison phones like the Palm Centro that performed much better in this test than the Glyde.
adding a new contact was easy
The presence of a QWERTY keyboard definitely sped up our entry time on the Glyde, however we were slowed down by the touch screen interface, which was slow to respond to finger presses. You access your contacts from the home screen by tapping ont he dedicated on screen button. From there you just need to tap on the Add button to create a new contact. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Looking/Sorting/Search (5.0)
Your contacts are presented as a simple list organized alphabetically by name. There's only one field for name so there are no options to sort by first or last name. If you access your contacts via the home screen shortcut you are taken directly to this list. If you go in through the menu system you are given an intermediary menu where you can view your contacts by Group as well. Searching via the touch screen you can only search by the name, starting with the first letter of the name. If you open the device up to reveal the QWERTY keyboard you are also limited by the first letter starting with the first name. We would have much preferred to see predictive search with the on-screen keypad and the ability to search for any part of the name for either method.
better search features would have been appreciated
Fields (1.20)
When you create a new contact on the Samsung Glyde you are given a somewhat constrained selection of fields. These include name, four phone numbers, fax, two email addresses, group, picture, ringtone and note. With only twelve fields the Glyde has fewer than most regular phones, much less smart devices that can often have dozens of fields. The presence of a notes field that allows you to add any information you want helps a little, but it's not much help if you need more fields for phone numbers or email addresses.
Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (3.67)
The Samsung Glyde has a standard speed dial function, you can access the speed dials either via the on screen keypad or the number keys on the QWERTY keyboard. There's also a voice command feature available for voice dialing, however it failed to recognize three of our five test names, so we're not particularly impressed. Unfortunately there's no way to train a voice command for difficult to recognize names, so you can't fix this without changing your pronunciation.
voice dialing did not impress us
Adding Calendar Items (4.61)
Adding a calendar appointment to the Samsung Glyde is pretty slow at an average of 21.7 seconds. You can see below that this is slower than average and the slowest time amongst our comparison phones. Like many things on the Glyde we were slowed down by the touch screen, which is not very responsive.
adding an appointment was slower than average
The fastest way to create a new calendar appointment is to tap on the shortcut menu on the home screen and then choose the Calendar. You then have to tap on the next day in the Monthly view and then tap New in the bottom left to bring up a new appointment interface. For this test we use a lunch appointment for the following day. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Calendar Views (3.22)
The Samsung Glyde's calendar has three views available. The monthly view is the default view and shows you the current month with the current day highlighted in light blue and days with appointments in orange. Unfortunately no information is provided about the appointments on a given day, so this view is of limited utility.
monthly and weekly calendar views
The weekly view is a grid with days along the top and hours on the left. Appointments are blocked out during the time they are scheduled, however, just like the monthly view no information is available about the appointments.
the daily view is the most useful
The daily view is a list of all the appointments on that day, and is the most useful of the views as you get information about the title and time of the appointment. Overall the Glyde's calendar views are of limited utility. If you need to look up a date or get an overview of your free/busy time the monthly/weekly views can be of some help, but we don't think the views are flexible enough that anyone could use it as their main calendaring tool.
Fields (5.0)
When you create a new appointment on the Samsung Glyde your selection of fields is fairly basic. You can enter a name, start/end date, recurrence, alert and reminder. Recurrence options are daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. We would have liked to see options for weekdays and weekends as well. The alert options are also limited to some presets, but there are enough that most users should find them sufficient. Also missing are more advanced features like categories, all-day events, notes and locations. It's sufficient for entering a person's birthday or your dentist appointment, but as we mentioned above we wouldn't want to use the Glyde as our main calendaring tool.
Adding ToDo/Task (0.0)
The Samsung Glyde does not include support for tasks or to-dos. As such it will receive zeros in this section.
ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (0.0)
No tasks program.
Fields (0.0)
No tasks program.
Adding Notes (3.21)
Adding a new note to the Samsung Glyde took us 15.6 seconds. You can see below that this is slightly slower than average and significantly slower than any of our commparison phones. This is despite the presence of a QWERTY keyboard that made it fairly quick to type our note text. Once again the reason for the slower time was the unresponsive touch screen interface. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Note Interface (3.0)
The not interface on the Samsung Glyde is very simple. When you launch the program you get a list of existing notes with the first line of the note used as a title. At the bottom are buttons to add a new note, a back button and between them an options button, with the only option being the ability to erase notes. The erase feature does give you a lot of choice, when you select it a checkbox is added before you notes, simply check the notes you want to delete and then hit Done. This is an interface we'd like to see on other devices.
a simple notes interface
When you actually create a new note all you have is a text field with buttons along the bottom for Done, entry mode, options and backspace. When the phone is closed most of the screen is taken up by a virtual keypad for text entry. When you reveal the QWERTY keyboard this virtual keypad disappears so you get a larger entry field. No matter how large it is, however, you won't be entering too much information as notes are limited to 130 characters. There's no support for more advanced features like categorization or searching through your notes.
Note Formatting (0.0)
There are no formatting options like bolding or underlining your notes on the Samsung Glyde.
Voice Memo (3.0)
The voice memo program on the Samsung Glyde is buried in the menu system. To get to it you need to go to the main menu, choose Get It Now, Then Music & Tones and finally My Sounds. There at the top of a list of your sounds is a shortcut to create a voice note. Point is, if you need to record a lot of voice notes you better work out your thumb because you're going to be pressing the screen a lot. The voice note interface is simple, along the top is a status bar while at the bottom are three buttons: REC, Options and Back. Under the options you can choose to limit the voice note to 60 seconds for multimedia message or leave it unlimited. Voice notes you create are automatically saved to the My Sounds folder. From here you can play, erase or send via MMS.
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