Digital Trends

Samsung Glyde SCH-u940

June 17th, 2008 | by Mike Kobrin

Features and Design

The bar-shaped 4.1-ounce Glyde measures 4 x 2 x .7 inches -- thick but still very compact -- and has a midnight blue shell trimmed in chrome-colored plastic. A 2.8-inch touchscreen, an analog Home button, and the ear speaker take up the phone's front face, while the 2-megapixel camera lens and LED flash adorn the back. A pair of speakers and a 2.5-mm headphone jack sit on top, with buttons for power/hold, volume, and camera/camcorder on the right side. The charge/sync port is on the left side, and the phone's pinhole mic is located on bottom.

The phone's thickness is attributable to the QWERTY keyboard, which literally glides out to the left from behind the front. We're impressed with the quality and smoothness of the spring-loaded sliding mechanism, and the 3-row keyboard is excellent in terms of button size and feel. We did find the space bar's placement (between V and B) a little awkward, and the top row is crowded against the edge of the phone's top half, but we're happy the keys are backlit.

The Glyde has a microSD slot that supports the latest range of high-capacity cards, but Samsung oddly chose to keep it hidden underneath the back cover. At least you don't have to remove the battery to get at it, but cutting away a small part of the cover to expose the slot would have been much smarter.

Inside, the dual-band CDMA (800/1900MHz) Glyde packs stereo Bluetooth and assisted GPS, as well as 3G support and a fairly competent Web browser. It has 45MB of built-in flash memory for messages, applications, ringtones, media, and ringtones, though you can add up to 8GB with a microSD card. The Glyde lacks WiFi, though it has very good on-board email client that supports accounts like AOL Mail, Gmail, Windows Live, and Yahoo Mail.

Interface

The Glyde's capacitive touchscreen responds to your skin's ability to carry electricity away from the screen's electrodes, rather than simply being pressure sensitive. This means you can't use a stylus or fingernail to operate it.

To wake the screen, you press any physical button. To unlock it, touch the lock icon, and to lock it manually, press the tiny power/lock button on the side. Unfortunately, bugs cause it to sense touches in the wrong area of the screen, sense touches correctly but not activate the pressed virtual button, or occasionally wig out entirely in jittery spasms. This was extremely frustrating and made simple activities (like dialing) inconsistent.

When you slide out the keyboard, the screen automatically rotates to landscape mode. It's possible to use the QWERTY keyboard for functions like scrolling and activating links or buttons, and in some cases it makes operation far easier. But this defeats the whole purpose of having a touchscreen, which ultimately drives up the price of a phone.

In some instances, you can work around the screen's lack of precision by zooming in via the dedicated volume buttons on the side of the phone and dragging your finger to scroll vertically and horizontally. This slows down the overall experience, though, and we much prefer the convenience of gesture-based zooming like on the iPhone.

When you touch the screen, a motor vibrates briefly (with adjustable strength) to let you know the screen "heard" you. Unfortunately, just because the screen "hears" you doesn't mean it understands what you're trying to tell it; we often had to press buttons and links repeatedly to get the desired response, despite the phone having given haptic feedback.

Menus

Pressing the physical Home button underneath the LCD brings you to the main screen from anywhere in the phone's menu system. The main screen has three icons across the top for dialing, menu, and contacts, as well as a shortcut bar at the bottom for settings, with wide-open space in the middle. Pressing the tiny square in the center of the screen brings you to a customizable shortcuts menu for most of the phone's features.

Overall the menus are clear enough, and the buttons are generally large enough to be pressed easily. We like the interface's customizability, and the menus are very well laid-out for quick navigation, except for the annoyingly glitchy touchscreen.

Although the phone has no physical End button, you can use the Home button to end calls or get out of any other application that's running. Unfortunately, when the screen auto-locks as you're on a call, it doesn't automatically sense if you move the phone away from your face (a la the iPhone) -- you have to wake and unlock the screen.