Digital Trends

Samsung Glyde SCH-u940

June 17th, 2008 | by Mike Kobrin

GPS and Bluetooth

VZ Navigator ($2.99/day or $9.99/month USD) is a capable GPS app, and the phone was able to locate itself quickly enough in New York City, which is usually a challenge due to the tall buildings. You also get loud and clear turn-by-turn directions, live traffic reporting, and a 3D map, as well as local info like movies and weather.

Bluetooth on the Glyde was about the same as with our u740; transmission was consistently clear when the phone had an unobstructed path to our test headsets (a Plantronics Discovery 935 for mono and Jabra BT8030 for stereo). With walls and bodies in the way, range was limited to about 8-12 feet.


Battery Life

The Glyde's battery life is rated at just 3.5 hours of talk time (10.4 days standby), which is about half an hour less than that of the LG Voyager and less than half that of the iPhone. We found ways to save on battery life with the Glyde, however, like disabling or lowering the haptic feedback and keeping brightness and volume settings low. There's not WiFi to drain the battery, but if you use EVDO, Bluetooth, and camera features a lot, you may want to pass on the Glyde.

Conclusion

We think the Glyde could be a solid phone if it had a more reliable touchscreen and a better Web browser (really, Verizon, it's embarrassing); as it is, we give it borderline pass/fail grade. We look forward to Samsung's Instinct, which will include hot features like Visual Voicemail, and we pray they did a better job with the touchscreen.


Pros:

• Sliding mechanism and keyboard feel great
• Extras like GPS, camera, Bluetooth
• Decent reception and call quality

Cons:

• Unreliable touchscreen
• Verizon's Web browser is very limited