Digital Trends

Samsung Glyde SCH-u940

June 17th, 2008 | by Mike Kobrin

Calls and Reception

In our testing the Glyde got nearly identical 1XRTT and EVDO reception to our Samsung u740, which has served us reasonably well for several months so far. Oddly, twice we got brief "Leaving Service Area" messages while sitting still in our Brooklyn apartment, but we'll chalk that up to quirkiness.

Call clarity on our end was very good and consistent across different volume levels via the earpiece. We were less impressed with the speakerphone's sound quality, though the full-duplex chip prevented dropouts when two people talk at the same time. People we called said our voice sounded a bit fuzzy but intelligible.

Camera

The integrated 2-megapixel camera has an autofocus lens and a small LED flash, and it can capture video at up to 320 x 240 resolution. The pictures we took didn't look too bad as long as there was plenty of ambient light present. Outdoors in daylight, our pictures were reasonably sharp with adequate detail and a slight tendency toward softness and overexposure. Indoors, our pictures were often blurry; the autofocus seemed to have trouble locking onto anything, and the flash wasn't much help.

Aside from being very small, our test videos (aside from tiny) looked like average cell phone video: blurry, pixilated and slightly jumpy. In lots of daylight, the camcorder fared okay, but in most indoor scenes, it captured enough detail to give you the general idea, but not much more.

Multimedia

One thing we really miss in the Glyde is any sort of mobile TV like Verizon's MediaFLO (supported by the LG Voyager). Instead, the Glyde is limited to your own videos or V Cast streaming video. You can also purchase music over the air from Verizon's Music Store, or listen to your own files (MPEG-4, H.264, and Real Video). The screen looks pretty good, and downloads are about as quick as they were with the LG Voyager -- about a minute for music tracks or a little more than that for (low-res) videos.

Supported music files include MP3, AAC+, eAAC+, and Real Audio. We tried to plug in our own headphones via a RadioShack 2.5-mm adapter, but the pin order in the Glyde's jack didn't match the adapter, causing audio to come only out of the right earphone unless we unplugged it half way. Music is clear if not particularly loud from the phone's built-in speaker, but we're hoping Samsung comes to its senses with its forthcoming Instinct and includes a proper 3.5-mm jack.

Web

Surfing the Web using Verizon's proprietary browser was consistently speedy as long as we had a strong EVDO signal. You can choose to view pages as they appear on a desktop browser or in an optimized version that reformats some sites to the Glyde's screen. The browser is significantly hampered by lack of Flash or Ajax support, but the overall experience was smooth thanks to the excellent QWERTY keyboard. The dedicated email client worked great with our GMail and Yahoo accounts, and the IM client handled our AIM chats very smoothly with a simple interface.

Image Courtesy of Samsung