Samsung Glyde Review - Design & Features

Design & Features

When I first held Glyde I was really taken with how small it felt.  Granted it’s fairly thick, but it really felt much more like a “regular phone” than a messaging phone with a sliding — that is, “glyding” — keyboard hidden under its display.  Glyde’s rounded corners, deep blue glossy plastic body, and chromed plastic accents give it a fun-meets-high tech look, and its size makes it easy to hold and use with either one hand on the touchscreen or both thumbs on the keyboard.

Glyde’s front panel is dominated by a 2.8” touchscreen with a single button - the Home key - below and the speaker above.  The panel slides sideways to reveal a full QWERTY board with small but surprisingly comfortable backlit buttons finished in black on a black background bordered by a chrome strip with rounded corners.  The look says High-Tech Fun, and I really think Samsung did a great job packing a QWERTY board into Glyde without making it geeky looking.

Along the edges of the handset you’ll find plastic-capped headphone and charger jacks, a button for lock/power, a rocker switch for volume/zoom, and another button that activates the camera.  The back panel houses the camera’s lens, flash, and self portrait mirror, and sliding the panel off gains access to the microSD card slot and battery.  While you do have to remove the back panel to get to the memory card, it’s not hidden behind the battery and so is still hot-swappable.

What’s neat about Glyde is that it feels more like a phone than a smartphone or PDA when you’re holding or using it — I found Glyde to feel smaller than it actually is, and so constantly found myself thinking, “It’s so cool that they put a full QWERTY board in this cute little phone!”  A glance at the spec sheet revealed that Glyde isn’t exactly tiny - but it’s still quite a bit smaller than your average smartphone, and is easily used with one hand thanks to the touchscreen.

Glyde is compatible with VCAST music and videos, including the VCAST music store, and it also came with the latest build of Verizon’s VZ Navigator service, which works with the onboard GPS chip to provide location based services.  The phone also supports mobile Email and IM, and has a full HTML Web browser which also works with Verizon’s “Optimized Web” service.

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