Our review of the Samsung Galaxy S Glide

[howard]

Here's our review of the Samsung Galaxy S Glide written by Sabesh.



After reviewing Bell's excellent Motorola XT860, I wished for similar sliders to compete with it, as I'm a fan of physical keyboards. My wish came true when Rogers released the Samsung Galaxy S Glide (reviewed here). It's called the "Samsung Captivate Glide" in the US market. Here are the highlights:


- 4" Super AMOLED screen.
- 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core CPU.
- 1GB RAM.
- 8GB internal storage.
- 8MP rear camera.
- 1.3MP front camera.
- 480 x 800 resolution.
- Android 2.3.5 O/S (Gingerbread).
- TouchWiz 4 UI overlay.
- Sliding QWERTY keyboard (4 rows).
- Stereo Bluetooth v3.0.



It's a small phone (124 x 64 x 13 mm), weighing just 147g, compared to XT860's 184g. Despite the all-plastic chassis, it's well built and feels quite solid: There's no "play" on the sliding keyboard. It fits perfectly in hand(s) in portrait, landscape, keyboard out or collapsed. One handed usage is excellent and I was able to reach all parts of the screen in portrait mode with my thumb. It's a "brick" design, with no curves, but has an understated elegance. The back (battery cover) has a textured surface for good grip. Battery lasts well over a work day with moderate use. Call quality and reception are very good. Talk time is well over 10 hours and noise cancellation is excellent.


Layout:
- Headphone jack and Micro USB slot on top.
- Power button on top-right.
- Volume rocker on top-left.
- Camera and LED flash at the back.



The keyboard is excellent. The keys are spaced out adequately to accommodate large thumbs. Dedicated keys are provided for symbols, menu, home, www & .com and voice. Initially, I found myself hitting the "home" key instead of the "shift" key, but quickly got used to it. It's quite easy to type on the keyboard and I liked the rubbery touch of the keys. I did like it better than XT860's keyboard. It's the best landscape sliding keyboard I've used thus far.



The screen is excellent. In fact, I prefer it over my Galaxy S II's Super AMOLED + screen, despite not having the "Plus" designation. The screen colours are more natural, being more on the bluer side, than the Galaxy S II's overly warm tones. Due to the smaller screen and having the same resolution, everything appears sharper on the Glide as compared to the Galaxy S II.


I could write a dissertation on TouchWiz, but it's safe to say that it simplifies re-sizing widgets, creating folders & managing tasks is a breeze. Handling contacts is intuitive: Swipe left to create an SMS, swipe right to call. Once registered, a contact's social media activity is displayed in the last two tabs of the contact field. The music player has equalizer presets, which is a useful feature for me.


Samsung provides useful apps like Memo, Diary and Quick Office. Quick Office is used to handle Microsoft Office applications. I prefer this over the ubiquitous "Documents to go". Quickoffice, combined with the physical keyboard makes it easy to get productive at work combined with the Email client's MS Exchange support.


The browser is great, supporting text auto-scale, pinch-zoom and two-finger tilt-zoom. Text is crisp and colours are as natural as can be on an AMOLED display. Multiple tabs are easily handled via pinching, then zooming out to display the horizontally flowing tabs. Popup blocker is a nice bonus.


The Glide is quite speedy and I didn't feel the need for more CPU power when watching movies, playing games or reading MS Office documents. Quadrant score was good, but Vellamo score was average. This device has no lag at all. I can recommend the Glide for practically any application.


The 8MP camera is on par with that of the Samsung Galaxy S II & iPhone 4S, making it tops among all mobile phones I've seen to date. Touch focus, picture effects and ISO control make is a pleasure to use. It's AF is pretty good and can also focus very close, making it ideal for those delicious food pictures, even in low ambient light. In fact, close-ups/macros are as good as it gets among smart phones. Low light capability is on par with the Galaxy S II. The LED flash is good to anything between 2 - 5 meters.



The Glide's Achilles Heel is video. It can only shoot up to 720P, despite having a speedy processor! Video quality is very good. However, as with most other Samsung smart phones, AF during video can be hit or miss.


I enjoyed my time reviewing the Glide. In fact, I almost bought one myself, as it is that good. It doesn't look flashy, but is tastefully designed and feel good in a jeans or jacket pocket. I absolutely loved the keyboard and was able to type faster on it than on my Blackberry 9700! Battery life is very good, unlike most other Android smartphones which run out of juice during a work day. It's not exactly a cheap device, but if you are looking to for an Android phone with a good keyboard, then the Glide would be my highest recommendation.


Pros:
- Ability to play Tegra-only games in the market.
- VPN, MS Exchange email and the physical keyboard makes it an ideal productivity device.
- Best-of-class keyboard.
- Super AMOLED display was cooler tones that the Galaxy S II, making it more natural.
- Pixel density is higher compared to the Galaxy S II, entailing a crisp display.
- TouchWiz looks good with pleasing transition effects & customization options.
- Good battery life.
- Text looks very good.
- MicroSD card support.
- Fast CPU.
- Great build quality.
- Excellent call quality and reception.


Cons:
- Video is only 720P. AF during video isn't perfect.
- Home button can be accidentally pressed instead of the Shift key & vice versa.

[lagunacid]

I have this phone and I like it very much, but I wouldn't say that the screen is better than the S2. The pentile is pretty visible if you're using the phone close to your face, and the whites are grayer than the whites in the S2.
That is not to say this phone isn't amazing, though. I can't wait until custom ROMs are available.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I927R using Tapatalk

[andy_1986]

Just got this phone last week. Good review. Deciding to keep it or not, have only made a few calls on it, call quality seems loud n clear. Not sure if signal is weak or not, wifi/4g bars seem pessimistic