You may have already been acquainted with the Samsung Captivate Glide, but it hasn’t quite gotten as much attention as it deserves. Today, that changes. I got the opportunity to get up close and personal with the new Android slider and found it to be a solid little handset for anyone who simply can’t stand touchscreen keyboards.
To refresh, the Samsung Captivate Glide will run on AT&T’s 4G HSPA+ network, and run Android 2.3 Gingerbread. It sports a 4-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen, with a dual-core 1GHz processor under the hood. You’ll find an 8-megapixel flash-enabled shooter on the rear capable of video capture in 1080p, along with a 1.3-megapixel front-facing cam for video chat. It packs 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal memory with support for a microSD card up to 32GB. Naturally, the Captivate Glide has support for HDMI out, and of course sports a sliding four-row QWERTY keyboard.
Upon first inspection, the Captivate Glide doesn’t necessarily stand out. It’s much like any other Android slider handset you’ve seen before, but with specs that can compete with the likes of the Droid RAZR and HTC Rezound in terms of performance. In fact, if you’re looking at it head-on, the Captivate Glide reminds me a lot of the Samsung Galaxy S II with rounded corners and a very (sorry to say it, Samsung) iPhone-like shape.
Then you pick up the phone and realize its quite a bit thicker (to make room for that QWERTY keyboard, of course) and sports a nice textured finish across the back. It’ll probably pick up more crumbs than your standard plastic back panel, but it’s also more comfortable, offers a better grip, and feels a bit more expensive. The keyboard felt solid, and slid back and forth quite smoothly. The 480×800 display was fine, but it didn’t blow me away like the Super AMOLED Plus display on the SGS II.
The Captivate Glide is actually lighter than it looks, but I still wouldn’t necessarily call it light. And while it shares a few specs with some of the big guns out there, you’re definitely trading in a thin little waist line for that QWERTY sliding keyboard. That is the case with most sliders, and textaholics (who prefer physical keyboards) tend to already know that’s part of the equation, but it’s still worth noting.
All in all the Samsung Captivate Glide is a smart little slider that should offer a solid, strongly spec’d alternative to the keyboard-less candy bars currently dominating the market. Pricing and availability are as yet unannounced.
