Product Reviews

While mobile phones seem to undergo some huge technological reinvention every year or so, fixed-line telephones haven't really changed that much since Antonio Meucci first figured out a way to order a quattro formaggi without leaving the house. With its new Glide though, BT is looking to drag the humble telephone into the 21st century.

The Glide is a compact cordless telephone that communicates with its equally compact base station via Bluetooth, rather than the more usual DECT. This makes no discernable difference to its range or call quality, but it does mean that the Glide is capable of one or two extra wireless tricks. Of these, being able to synchronise its phonebook with

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a Bluetooth-equipped mobile phone or PC is perhaps the most useful, but being able to use a hands-free headset with the landline phone as well as a mobile will no doubt appeal to some people too.

As it turns out, Bluetooth connectivity is the only real highlight of the Glide and the most of its other mobile phone-like features are just pale imitations of the real thing. As long as you're happy to cough up for BT's Caller ID service, the ability to send text messages is handy, but the selection of ten polyphonic ring tones and 15 wallpapers to liven up the small colour screen are hardly anything to get excited about. The screen itself is just on the legible side of murky, although it's preferable to the usual one-line LCD used by other cordless phones when it comes to navigating through the Glide's various menus.

Sadly, the rest of the Glide is pretty unprepossessing. Its slider design relegates the keypad to the bottom end of the phone's bottom half, and the closely packed keys' reflective finish makes their dimly illuminated numbers difficult to see in anything but near-darkness. The phone itself has a cheap, plasticky feel and while this isn't necessarily an issue for a £50 handset, the cheapest price we could find for the Glide online was £130.