Samsung Glyde Review - Conclusion

Conclusion

Glyde’s a cool little phone, even if it’s not really all that little.  Between Glyde, Voyager, Alias, and enV2, Verizon now has four non-smartphones with QWERTY boards in its line up.  That speaks volumes about how people use their phones these days - texting (and Emailing and Web surfing) is fast becoming as important to people as voice calling.  Not everyone wants the power and complexity of a true smartphone, but more and more people want the ease-of-use of a QWERTY thumbboard.

Samsung took their uber-powerful F700 and shrunk it down to a more consumer-friendly size in Glyde.  The F700’s feature set was also trimmed, but only minimally, and Verizon was smart enough to merge their menus and icons with Samsung’s Croix user interface, resulting in a feature-filled device that’s still easy to use.  Backed by both a touchscreen and a QWERTY board, Glyde offers a slew of multimedia and messaging features in a fashionable package.

Glyde’s not without its faults, and the somewhat inconsistent response of the touch screen was definitely my biggest frustration with the device.  When it worked well for me, the display was excellent - on par with anything else out there save Apple’s iPhone.  Unfortunately I encountered consistent difficulty triggering Web links and other buttons located along the screen’s edges.  I’ll be curious to see if other reviewers and users encountered similar difficulty and, if so, if Verizon and Samsung can make things a little better down the road by way of a firmware update.

All in all, though, I like Glyde.  It’s great to see handsets becoming more powerful and easier to use at the same time, and VZW and Samsung went one further here by innovating a little when it comes to form factor.  Smaller than Voyager, sleeker than enV2, flashier than Alias - whatever you want to call it, Glyde brings a different look to Verizon’s VCAST Messaging Phone lineup, and I’m sure VZW subscribers will agree that it’s always nice to have choices.

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