Perhaps the most obvious litmus test for whether or not you’re holding a Samsung phone is whether or not the odd "sweep glass to unlock" lock screen shows up, giving you zero instruction as to how to access your phone until you touch the screen. That’s here, too, part of Samsung’s TouchWiz skin on top of Android 2.3.5. I don’t dislike TouchWiz nearly as much as I used to, because Samsung’s slimmed it down a lot, and even I’ve grown to love a couple of features, like the power manager in the notification window and the massively improved camera app. For the most part, though, I found myself wondering why Samsung felt the need to change icons and redesign the calendar, email, and browser apps. Samsung’s general aesthetic is very black-and-gray, which both mutes the awesome vividness of the screen and is just kind of ugly to look at. But that’s my own preference, and if you’re not against TouchWiz normally the Glide is certainly no worse an offender.
The larger problem with TouchWiz is how long it’s likely to delay the Captivate Glide receiving an upgrade to Android 4.0, if it ever gets one at all. Samsung’s track record for updating its phones to newer versions of Android is poor to say the very least (and even worse on non-flagship phones like the Glide), and given how good Ice Cream Sandwich is, it’s hard to recommend a phone that might not get it any time soon. My recommendation for now, and this goes for any Android phone buyer: if you can wait to buy a phone, wait for one with Android 4.0.
There’s plenty of bloatware here, but no more than usual, and probably nothing you haven’t seen before. AT&T and Samsung are each partly responsible for the presence of AT&T Navigator, FamilyMap, Social Hub, Qik Lite, Yellow Pages, Amazon Kindle, and a bunch of other apps that you probably don’t want (I’d like to meet the person who uses "Featured Apps" all the time), but it’s nothing overly intrusive or problematic. A few can be uninstalled, but you’re stuck with most of them. My biggest annoyance is Samsung’s undying love for filling all seven of its phones’ home screens with widgets, more widgets, apps, and a few more widgets. They’re all easy to get rid of, but it’s an annoyingly long process just to make your phone look the way you want it to.
For some inexplicable reason, the Glide doesn’t do USB storage the way most Android phones do. It uses the MTP protocol, which works as expected on Windows machines but doesn’t talk to Macs at all — the phone doesn’t even show up — without the help of a third-party app. You can change that in the settings, but it’s buried, and the fact that you can’t just plug your phone into your computer and drag and drop files on and off is totally inexcusable. The Galaxy Nexus acts the same way, and though it’s done in the name of security and simplicity I’m not a fan. Samsung’s excellent Kies Air app is available in the Market, but for once it may have been a good idea for Samsung to preinstall it..
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