Review: Samsung Glyde
Screen
The Glyde's screen is a nice size. It's a bit narrow and long, making it look a little oblong, but it offers plenty of real estate for interacting with the menus and such. It was nice and bright, both indoors and out. The surface attracts fingerprints, but this is not a unique complaint. Colors looked great.
Signal
As with most Verizon phones, the Glyde has indicators for both EVDO and 1X signals. The Glyde managed to grab onto both EVDO and 1X signals in our testing zones, but we can't say it did well with either. It nabbed only 1 bar of EVDO signal and 2 bars of 1X most places we had the phone. The best we saw was 2 bars of EVDO and 3 bars of 1X. They was true even when we had other Verizon phones that showed full EVDO and 1X coverage. It failed the NJ vault test. The test results were identical both before and after the phone was provisioned correctly. (We will be performing additional tests on a second unit to be sure the signal issues were not related to a faulty unit.)
Sound
Sound quality of calls made through the Glyde was only so-so. Voices on the other ended of the line ranged from great to poor. We noticed some interference, and the calls faded in and out several times. The ringers and music could be made sufficiently loud to be heard from a distance, and it will certainly wake you up from a dead sleep if you use it as an alarm clock. Music sounded decent, but not fantastic.
Battery
We've had the Glyde on for five days and haven't had to recharge it yet. We've been testing it, but we generally prefer to run through two full charge-discharge cycles before reporting on battery life. Unfortunately, we did not have that opportunity before publishing this report. That said, the battery was still half full after 5 days of light use.