Samsung Glyde Cell Phone Review - Tour & Design
|
Alfredo Padilla Published on May 28, 2008 Comment on this |
|
|
|
|
The Samsung Glyde is a touch screen driven device with the front dominated by the 2.8 inch display. The other major feature of the Glyde is the slide out QWERTY keyboard. The device is relatively narrow, but it's a little on the thick side, meaning it might feel big in your pants pocket.
Front Closed
From the front the Samsung Glyde is dominated by its large 2.8 inch display. Above the display is the Verizon logo with the slot for the phone speaker just above it. Below the display is the Samsung logo and the only button you'll find on the front, a Home button. Remind you of anything?
the front is dominated by a 2.8 inch touchscreen
Front Open
The Glyde rotates into landscape mode when you slide open its QWERTY keyboard. The Home button ends up on the right side.
the Glyde sports a slide-out QWERTY keyboard
Left
On the left side of the Samsung Glyde you'll find Samsung's proprietary port near the top, with a tethered cover to protect it. Just above the port is the eyelet for a lanyard.
microsd slot on the left side
Top
On the back of the Glyde you'll find the 2.5mm headphone jack, with a tethered cover protecting it.
a headphone jack, too bad headphones were not included
Bottom
The only thing you'll see on the bottom of the Glyde is the pinhold for the phone's microphone.
not much on the bottom
Right
The right side of the Samsung Glyde has three buttons. Near the top is the power/lock button. Just below it is the volume control and near the bottom is a dedicated camera button.
camera key, volume and power/lock button
Back
The back of the Glyde comes off in almost a single piece. Near the top of the back you'll see the camera lens, flash and self-portrait mirror.
a two megapixel auto-focus camera on the back
Battery Out
When you remove the back of the Glyde you reveal the battery. This is also the only way to get to the Micro SD card slot, which is found on the top of the device with the battery cover off.
remove the back to reveal the battery
In the Box (2.0)
The Glyde doesn't ship with many accessories. In addition to manuals and a charger the only other accessory is a data cable for transferring music onto the device. We would have liked to see a pair of headphones and memory card as well.
Handling (4.0)
The Glyde sits comfortably in the palm of your hand when closed, aided by its relative lack of width, but it is fairly tall and thick. The edges of the phone are rounded, however, which makes it feel smaller than it is. At 4.13 ounces it's not terribly light, but it also isn't very heavy, so you shouldn't have problems holding it up to your head for long calls. What might be a problem is the slick plastic the phone is built from, we can definitely imagine people dropping the device on a fairly regular basis. When opened the device needs to be held in two hands and we found that the top row of the QWERTY keyboard was too close to the upper part of the phone, meaning your fingers will bump into it a lot as you type.
Portability (5.0)
At 4.09 x 1.97 x 0.7 inches the Samsung Glyde isn't a large phone, but it is rather thick. This means you'll probably have trouble sliding it into a tight pants pocket. Whatever pocket you have it in you'll feel it in there, although it won't weight you down too much as it's not overly heavy at 4.13 ounces. It should fit fine into a bag or jacket pocket. Still, it's decidedly less portable than thinner devices like the LG enV2 or the iPhone.
Aesthetics (5.0)
The Glyde is dark blue with a glossy finish all over. Our impressions are that the phone isn't ugly, but it's not particularly attractive either. We don't like how thick it is and there's nothing about it that will stand out to others. This opinion was largely comfirmed by our office mates, although one person was mesmerized by the movable stars on the default home screen.
Durability (4.0)
Like any phone that has moving parts we are concerned about the Samsung Glyde's sliding QWERTY mechanism and how well it will hold up over time. The mechanism is spring loaded, but it didn't feel particularly robust. We're also concerned that all that shiny plastic could get scratched easily, not to mention the very prominent camera lens, we're sure that will get scratched within the first week. Apart from those concerns we don't see any major problems with the Glyde's construction, the ports are covered to help keep dust out and all the buttons feel fairly sturdy.
| Previous Next | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
