While I’ve never been fond of putting a case on my BlackBerry, I have to admit that I was intrigued when I first saw the SmrtCase Glide. The idea behind the case is much like any other case, where being thin, light, and unobtrusive are key. However, the SmrtCase Glide quite literally has a card up its sleeve because the case allows users to carry with them a credit card, ID card, business cards, and any other cards you can think of.

The SmrtCase Glide does a good job protecting my phone while managing to stay fairly thin and sleek. While SmrtCase claims that the Glide will hold two plastic cards and one ID card I found that even loading up two plastic cards makes retrieving them difficult. One card really offers the best experience as far as sliding the card in and out of the case. They have also been nice enough to include a plastic shield to protect the battery door against the cards sliding in and out. While this may seem unnecessary, I was surprised to see how buggered up the shield was after using the case for a few days.

The case itself is made of semi-flexible plastic and wraps around the back of my Tour. While the case offers good protection of my phone it is a tad bulky, but then again I’m not one to use cases so I’m a harsh critic. The plastic also seems pretty cheap, and I would have loved to see a soft-touch coating on the case. My single biggest beef with the design of the SmrtCase Glide is if I use the card slot for holding any standard-sized card, it covers the camera. The flash remains uncovered but if I want to take a photo with the case on and being used as it is designed to be used, I will at least have to slide the card out partially to clear the camera lens. This seems totally crazy to me but maybe the folks at SmrtCase were banking on people rarely using their cameras. I also had some trouble with the size of the cutout for the microUSB port. It is just a little too small to allow the connector to fully click into the port. I can get my phone to charge, but if I bump anything the cord tends to pop out.

Overall I like the idea of being able to stow away a couple cards in your smartphone’s case. It’s a really nice system when you don’t want to carry your wallet just so you can have your ID and a credit card on you. That said, I still feel like the case could have been planned a little better, including a larger hole for the microUSB and perhaps pushing the card slot lower allowing for use of the camera while holding cards.