Samsung Captivate Glide review: Thumbs ready

Introduction

The Samsung Captivate Glide for AT&T Wireless is long overdue. The market is brimming of dual-core Android devices and the slide-out QWERTY packing Samsung Captivate Glide has only just arrived.

Interestingly enough, it’s been a relatively quiet year for the fans of the hardware QWERTY droids. The offerings are few, while the potential users are plenty – good news for Samsung’s entry.

Samsung Captivate Glide official photos

In terms of specs, the Samsung Captivate Glide is rather closely related to the Galaxy R – the two major differences between the two phones can be found in the screen department and, of course, the presence of hardware QWERTY in the case of the Captivate Glide. The smartphone sports an NVIDIA Tegra 2 CPU with two 1GHz cores and a gig of RAM. The display has been taken straight from last year’s Galaxy S – not a bad a thing since the 4” Super AMOLED unit with WVGA resolution is still is one of the finest screens on the market.

Traditionally, we’ll begin by taking a look at the key features of the Samsung Captivate Glide, followed immediately by its main disadvantages.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support
• 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support
• 4" 16M-color Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with WVGA (480 x 800 pixels) resolution
• Android OS v2.3.5 with TouchWiz 4 launcher
• 1 GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 CPU, 1GB of RAM
• 4 row slide-out QWERTY keyboard
• 8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash; 720p HD video recording at 30fps
• Exchange ActiveSync support; virtual private network access and device encryption
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n support
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity; Digital compass
• 8GB internal storage, microSD slot; 1.3MP front-facing camera
• Accelerometer, gyroscope and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Charging MHL microUSB port and TV-out support
• Stereo Bluetooth v3.0
• Document editor
• File manager comes preinstalled
• Rich video format support

Main disadvantages

• All-plastic body
• No dedicated camera button
• Lack of Galaxy S II branding, despite the eye-poking performance and software similarity

As you can see, there is plenty the Samsung Captivate Glide has to offer. Its hardware QWERTY is one of the most comfortable examples we’ve encountered. The Tegra 2 CPU on the other hand, while not a typical fixture for Samsung’s Android lineup, is certainly respectable in terms of performance.

Our initial disappointment came from the fact that the device lacks even the slightest reference to the Galaxy S II family, despite the fact that the Captivate Glide is properly equipped to be a part of it. On this instance, we believe that both Samsung and AT&T have overlooked the marketing potential which such a branding would have offered (Samsung Galaxy S II in all its different incarnations is still selling quite briskly).

Samsung Captivate Glide live shots

We are going to continue next with an unboxing of the Samsung Captivate Glide, followed by design and build quality inspection.

Editorial: You might notice that this review is shorter than usual and doesn't include all of our proprietary tests. The reason is it has been prepared and written far away from our office and test lab. The Samsung Captivate Glide for AT&T is a US-only phone, so it will probably never get to the shores of the Old Continent. Still, we think we've captured the essence of the phone in the same precise, informative and detailed way that's become our trademark. Enjoy the good read!