Anyhow, back to the phone instad of my typing. My phone had a solid feel once put together. The slider mechanism was far tighter than many samsung models I’ve played with. It’s fast, the screen is bright and clear, volume and clarity of incoming calls is great. I did notice I’d occasionally hear an echo with someone using speakerphone (like coupling the phone with the car radio via bluetooth). That’s not present on someone using a standard phone.

There have only been two downsides to the phone – the first being that the rear cover is a little thin, but you don’t notice this once it’s in place and pressed down firmly. The other was the texting interface. I’m not sure if the thought bubble type of texting is standard for android or not, but the last two phones i had (one windows mobile, the other was android froyo) had a lovely line by line interface – something that looked like actual text instead of text inside a picture (i don’t do pictures well – hence me being a linux geek and generally disliking windows until win7 – the dislike came back with win8). In order to remedy this, I ended up installing GoSMS, then took advantage of the customisations to change it to how i wanted it to look. From what i’ve read, I could have gotten the line by line with an earlier revision of gingerbread. The phone has 2.3.6 and they removed the option in either 2.3.4 or 2.3.5.

Any way you look at this, the aforementioned two small issues are not enough to turn me off the phone. My purchase of this phone was definitely a win, and I love it. I actually carry my phone with me at work now instead of leaving it in my messenger bag in a cabinet during my work hours. Despite being slightly tinny, the sound is fairly decent for phone speakers, and also can go fairly loud when needed. While I wouldn’t compare it to a a terratec or turtle beach card, with headphones the sound is fairly good. As far as the qwerty keyboard goes, my fingertips are quite sensitive so it doesn’t feel flat to me and I type well on it. There is also decent feedback when you press the keys. The keyboard also has a plus or two. If you need to do a lot of typing in capital letters, or numeric input, if you press shift or alt twice in a row, it will act as a caps-lock or alt-lock for you, and you press it once more to change it back to normal. The phone is fairly fast as well. All in all, this is a phone that was well worth the money, I recommend it to anyone needing a qwerty keyboard that is stuck in the middle of a contract with AT&T. Yes, there are better phones out there on other carriers, but this is one of the better phones AT&T has available, and I’m quite satisfied with my purchase!

I have this phone.  I’ve had it for a little over a week.  I DO NEED A QWERTY KEYBOARD, so, it was down to this or the Droid 3.  The Droid has slightly better specs in some areas but where it matters they are very similar.  I went with the Captivate Glide over the Droid 3 for the form factor and ATT vs. Verizon. 

LOVING THIS PHONE!  So far it is the absolute best device I’ve ever owned.  I’ve loaded it to the max with everything on my previous Droid with a 1ghz processor.  The Captivate Glide has yet to have a single slow-down in any way, shape or form!  The keyboard is flat but once you get used to it, you can type without looking and 100% (almost) accuracy!  Not possible on any virtual keyboard–don’t care who you are or what phone you’re using.  The physical keyboard is a must and this is a good one.  Not the best but certainly good.  More storage than 8gb would have been nice or a 4.3+ inch display, but now I’m getting picky.  This is a great qwerty device!

The slider mechanism suffers from the same issue as the phone as a whole, and to a large degree, all new Samsung’s as a whole; it feels cheap. It’s not as tight as it should be, has to be pushed from the middle of the phone, and doesn’t really give the confidence that it’s going to hold up over time. Maybe it will though.

Aside from the lack of 1080p video recording, which I still don’t understand, my other issue with this was the paltry amount of onboard storage. They tell you 8GB of storage, but that translates to 3.5GB of mass memory with another 1.8 partitioned for apps. Not enough for me.

I’ve been waiting for an answer to the Motorola Droids from AT&T, and this isn’t it, at least in my opinion. The only two things this has over the Droid 3 are more RAM and a better display. So if you’re looking for that Droid 3 on AT&T, chances are you’re going to have to keep waiting. Give it a whirl though first, maybe you’ll like it. I’ll probably end up getting this and then sell it for an unlocked XT860 (Droid 3) when it finally comes out.

I had an old candybar HTC FUSE on Windows.  The transition to the new Android was very easy.  The folks in the store had some problems moving my contacts over.  But if your are on MS Exchange for your business email, I suggest you let Active Synch and Exchange move your contacts.  They automagically appeared the next morning. 

When you say the battery cover is thin, are you worried about it popping off accidentally & snapping, or is it just a comment on the build quality?