Samsung Captivate Glide

Is this the best physical QWERTY phone on AT&T?

The Samsung Captivate Glide can be thought of much like a Galaxy S2 with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, though it doesn't get to carry the Galaxy S2 badge.

It's clearly intended as a successor to the original Captivate (which was a Galaxy S phone), and shares many of the same design characteristics.

Its 4-inch Super AMOLED display offers very vivid colors, but sports a resolution of just 480x800 - not bad by any means, but nothing exceptional. Many phones in the Captivate Glide's price range, like the Motorola Atrix 2 and HTC Vivid, feature superiorqHD displays (which sport 540x960 resolutions).

Inside is a 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, and while it's by no means slow, most current dual-core processors will outperform it; nonetheless, Samsung has Android 2.3 Gingerbread running very well on it. As a new device, it should see an update to Android 4.0 eventually.

The 8MP rear camera with LED flash is on par with other high-end phones, but can only record video at a maximum resolution of 720p. It also has a 1.3MP front-facing camera for video chatting.

Its saving grace is the slide-out 4-row QWERTY keyboard. They keys are all backlit and sit flush with the surface of the phone.

The keyboard layout is effective, but definitely takes some getting used to. Those looking for a phone with a physical keyboard should definitely consider the Captivate Glide.

Of course, as a slider, it's certainly not the thinnest phone, though at 13mm thick, it's thinner than the HTC MyTouch 4G Slide and as thin as the Droid 3 (not quite as thin as the Droid 4, though).

Samsung's attempts to achieve a "Premium" feel fall short; however, it still feels like a solid device, especially for a slider.

The back cover, while a nice grippy texture, is really its greatest design downfall as it's just a thin piece of plastic which gives the Glide an almost hollow feel, similar to the Samsung Infuse 4G.

Under the back cover is a 1650mAh battery which does a surprisingly good job lasting through the day.

There is also a MicroSD slot which is accessible without the need of pulling the battery or SIM card, which is useful because the Captivate Glide only has 8GB of internal storage, most of which is reserved.

At $149 with two-year contract ($499 without), the Captivate Glide could easily offer more – a notification light and 1080p recording would be nice – but for those in the market for a QWERTY slider, it's hard to find better.

Even though the Captivate Glide features the same 1GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM as the Atrix 4G, a device known for disappointing interface performance, Samsung clearly put a lot of effort into create a smooth experience.

Running Android 2.3 Gingerbread (and hopefully to see an update to Ice Cream Sandwich in the future), the Glide's TouchWiz custom UI is amazingly smooth, even when the home screen is crammed full of widgets.

The lock screen is similar to all of the Galaxy S devices you may have seen before, but has been updated with a few visual enhancements, such as new notification graphics – no more puzzle pieces.

The home screen is very customizable. Not only can you add widgets (as with any Android device), but you can add and remove screens as well. You can have anywhere from one to seven screens.

Pinching the home screen brings up the option to add or remove screens as well as change their order. Each page has a 4x4 grid on which to add widgets.

Across the bottom are four static icons: Phone, Messaging, Web, and Applications. We do wish it were possible to customize these four icons, or at least a couple of them.

While you can't reshape and icons or widgets, the Captivate Glide does have an interesting feature that allows the home screen to witch to a landscape view (instead of the usual portrait view) when the keyboard is out.

TouchWiz also offers a few small additions over the stock Android interface, such as the ability to customize the App Drawer. You can change the order your apps are listed as well as add folders and new pages.