Samsung Glyde Review

Interface:

The user interface is based on Verizon’s standard menu layout while incorporating some aspects of the F700’s Croix interface. The home screen displays the signal strength and battery level, while also showing icons for the Dial Pad, Menu, and Contacts along the top, a blue Shortcut Square in the middle, with an Alert Bar and date & time across the bottom.

The main menu is laid out identical to the Voyager in a 2x4 grid, with icons for Get it Now, Messaging, Contacts, Recent Calls, Settings & Tools, My Music, Browser, and VZ Navigator. If you press your finger and hold it to the screen, it will have two blue lines (horizontal and vertical) crossing at the current menu selection. Releasing your finger then selects that area of the menu. Unfortunately this uniqueness comes at the cost of not having any additional themes to choose from, with the only options for customizing being the wallpaper, dial font size, and two clock formats. The blue Shortcut Square located on the home screen brings up a 3x4 grid of 12 commonly used features where each one can be replaced with over 25 selections. This is an easy way for the user to have one-touch access to their most commonly used applications and services. The bottom Alert Bar will show color icons on the home screen if there is a new message, voice mail, missed call, calendar event, or saved alarm. You can also press the alert bar to access any of those menus directly without having to go through the standard main menu or shortcuts menu.


Phonebook:

Up to 500 contacts can be stored by entering the information directly on the touchscreen or by using the QWERTY keyboard. For each one you can enter in their name, 5 phone numbers, e-mail address, and can select a specific picture and ringtone. Once the information is saved, you can assign them to one of 999 speed dial locations. Retrieving a stored contact is easily done by pressing the contact icon located at the top of the home screen. This brings all of them up in a list that you can scroll through, or you can press the go to field, where you can type in the first or last name and have it search your stored list. When you receive an incoming call, and that person is stored in your list, the display will show their name and number, as well their picture ID (if there is one), and will play their specific ringtone (if set). Unfortunately, just as with the Voyager, the picture ID image is only about ½” in size. We do not understand why Verizon would allow the picture ID to be that small, considering the large size of the display.

Pressing the dial pad icon from the home screen will bring up a numeric dial pad for entering a phone number. However, due to the touchscreen issues, it can become troublesome to use. Often times when we would press 7, 8, or 9, it would think we pressed *, 0, or #. This can easily be cleared before pressing Send, but after being connected, and logging into a voicemail or banking system, it becomes even more challenging to press the correct number since they cannot be cleared. We sincerely hope that the touchscreen issues are resolved in the next software update, as they are so frequent that they almost make the Glyde unusable and unreliably as a primary phone.


Organizer:

Nothing new has been added to the calendar and it operates in similar fashion to most other Verizon phones. It begins by showing the current month with the date highlighted in blue. From there, you can move forward or backwards one month at a time by pressing the left and right arrows at the top, and can select a specific day of the week by using your finger. There is an option to allow you to view weekly instead of monthly and to type in a specific date to go to. Once the correct date is selected, you can add a new event with the appointment name, start date and time, end date and time, repeat (once, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly), alert tone, and reminder. When the phone reaches that saved event, it will display the information on the screen and playback the designated alert tone.

Separate from the calendar are three independent alarms, with each one allowing you to select the time, frequency (once, daily, mon-fri, weekends), and ringtone. This is an easy way to setup a daily wake-up alarm or notification if it takes place within 24 hours.

The speaker-independent voice commands can be launched by going though the main menu, or by simply going to the shortcuts. Once activated, there are 8 choices that you can speak to the phone: call name or number, send message, go to menu, check item, contacts name, play playlist, my account, and help. The most useful of these is the “call” command, where you can speak the digits to dial or the name of a person in your contacts list to call. The only training that is required is for the digits, not the names or commands. The system works best in quiet environments, but was still able to understand our voice selection while used in a car traveling at highway speeds, and while in noisy mall. It can also be used in conjunction with a Bluetooth headset, so you can call numbers while you are away from the phone.


There is a total of 45MB of internal memory on the Glyde, half of which is used by applications, leaving only 27MB available to the user. This pales in comparison to the Voyager, which has 184MB of internal memory, but the Glyde (as well as the Voyager) accepts microSDHC memory cards currently up to 8GB in size. However, larger cards are expected to be released, which will allow the storage limit to increase to 16GB and 32GB.