Review: Samsung Glyde
Browser
The Glyde has a full HTML browser for surfing the web. It is better than most phone-based browsers, but still finds some limitations.
For whatever reason, you can not browse the web holding the phone vertically. When you launch the browser, the phone automatically reorients itself to a landscape view. It takes you to a touch-optimized version of Verizon's deck, which is indentical to what the Voyager does.
Here there are 8 icons to jump to the usual deck content such as news, sports, and the weather. Along the bottom, there are six different buttons. They are: back, home, refresh, favorites, WWW and Menu. It's pretty self explanatory what they do. The one problem here is that these buttons take up a lot of valuable screen real estate. The Glyde's screen is narrow to begin with. Eating up 20% of the space to accommodate some buttons reduced the viewing area of the screen enough to make it annoying.
But, this set of buttons is the fastest way to get anything done with the browser. The menu button takes you to a list of options that duplicates most of the buttons on the screen. Because the viewing area is so small, you have to scroll a lot to reach all the menu items.
I found it awkward to browse with the Glyde closed. It is such a narrow phone, it was more comfortable for me to hold the phone in the open position.
With the EVDO radio, even full HTML pages render pretty quickly. It definitely beats the pants off the iPhone in page loading time, that is for sure.
Once a page has loaded, you can scroll around, up and down, back and forth, by using your finger. This is good, because even with the browser zoomed all the way out, you can't view an entire web page. Zooming is as simple as using the volume toggle along the top of the phone.
The biggest impediment to the browser's usability is the touch screen itself. Because it is somewhat flaky, you have to double press things from time to time. This gets in the way a lot when you just want to press and go.
Still, these minor navigational issues aside, the browser did a good job of loading pages. The Glyde presents a far better overall Internet experience than the bulk of WAP phones, no doubt.
Customize
As with most phones these days, you can change a number of the Glyde's settings. Want a new wallpaper? Easy. Need to turn off that pesky "beeping" every time you press the screen? Not a problem. Have to adjust the touch screen's sensitivity? It's in the bag.
You can also customize the shortcuts screen with the apps of your choice, as well as place them where you want. You can also turn the dial pad on or completely off, though I can't quite figure out why you'd want to do that.
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