Samsung Omnia i900 Review
Phone rating: OutstandingIn a nutshell: The Samsung Omnia is the hottest phone of 2008. It's a touchscreen smartphone and, unlike the iPhone, it does everything that a high-spec phone ought to do. The Omnia has everything: a 5 megapixel camera, 3G video calling, a music player & FM radio, fast web browsing, the most memory ever seen on a mobile phone, and it connects to any device you can think of via Bluetooth, USB or Wi-Fi.
Wow! While Apple have been hyping their iPhone 3G for the best part of a year, the Samsung Omnia has come from nowhere, and is the phone that the iPhone should have been. Whereas the iPhone misses out on all kinds of essential features, the Omnia does almost everything that you could want from a phone, and does it very well.
The Omnia looks super-cool too. The sleek platinum finish and the slim body give the phone wow! factor, even before you start using it.
Samsung have been churning out touchscreen phones since the beginning of 2008. First the Armani, then the Nerva, then the Tocco, each time refining the design and getting closer to the perfect phone. Now the Omnia looks like it could be "the one". Samsung's touchscreen user interface has improved a little with each release, although we criticised the Tocco for having a smaller screen. There is no problem with the Omnia however, which has a massive WQVGA 3.2 inch screen - that's even bigger than the LG Viewty and only slightly smaller than the iPhone 3G. The TouchWiz user interface is an excellent implementation of a touchscreen phone. TouchWiz uses a variety of intuitive touch controls, e.g. tap, sweep, drag and drop operations as well as an on-screen qwerty keyboard. The screen uses tactile feedback to help you feel your way around the menus and controls, and even hard-core texters should be happy with the result. The iPhone may have paved the way in touchscreen UI design, but Samsung have followed very well.
The Omnia is a smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1. This has a number of advantages. Firstly, the user interface will be familiar to PC users, even including a mobile version of Internet Explorer for web browsing. Secondly, the system enables convenient access to Office documents such as PowerPoint, Excel and Word (for editing as well as viewing). Thirdly, you can download third-party applications and install them on your phone. The phone comes pre-installed with very comprehensive personal organiser functions. The touchscreen user interface can sometimes be a little slow and more complicated to use than conventional phones, but we've got to say just how impressed we are by its robustness. Most smart phones crash and freeze regularly, but not the Omnia.
Let's take a look at the multimedia capabilities of the phone now. Summarising in three words: it does everything! Really! Let's consider the spec: A 5 megapixel camera with face-detection autofocus, smile detection (takes a shot when everyone is smiling), auto-panorama, LED flash and digital zoom. It may not have the optical zoom of the Samsung G800, the optics of the Nokia N95, or the xenon flash of the Sony Ericsson K800i, but we would rate it in the top 10 of current camera phones. In any case, it walks all over the feeble camera in the iPhone 3G. The camera can be used as a business card reader too. It also has an excellent video camera (with image stabilisation), and the video playback capability includes Divx support. Of course it's a 3G phone with video calling too. The music player is very good and supports nearly all formats, and an FM radio is included too. Web browsing is also an enjoyable experience on the Omnia, with fast HSDPA downloads, the large touchscreen, and advanced Opera browser all working together to provide a good experience. The Omnia also comes with GPS navigation built in.
One of the outstanding features of the Omnia is the absolutely huge memory that it supports. Available in a choice of 8 or 16 Gbytes, it also has a microSD memory card slot, enabling an additional 8 Gbytes to be added. This means that you can store a huge amount of music or video (around 8,000 songs or 23 DVD-quality films) and you can even store up to 120 Mbytes worth of text or MMS messages.
The battery life is very good too, which is quite a surprise for a touchscreen phone with so much functionality. We doubt Samsung's official figures of 450 hours standby however.
Connectivity is unbeatable, with a choice of Bluetooth, USB and Wi-Fi.
Really, the Omnia is an amazing phone, and it's no surprise that it's moved right to the top of the best seller charts at launch. Touchscreen phones are the hottest product in 2008, and the Omnia is arguably the best so far. If you fancied the new iPhone or the LG Viewty, you should really be looking at the Omnia instead. The only issue is the Windows Mobile operating system, which is very powerful, but makes the menus on the Omnia more complex than a conventional phone. But even so, this is definitely a 5 star phone!!!
The Omnia looks super-cool too. The sleek platinum finish and the slim body give the phone wow! factor, even before you start using it.
Samsung have been churning out touchscreen phones since the beginning of 2008. First the Armani, then the Nerva, then the Tocco, each time refining the design and getting closer to the perfect phone. Now the Omnia looks like it could be "the one". Samsung's touchscreen user interface has improved a little with each release, although we criticised the Tocco for having a smaller screen. There is no problem with the Omnia however, which has a massive WQVGA 3.2 inch screen - that's even bigger than the LG Viewty and only slightly smaller than the iPhone 3G. The TouchWiz user interface is an excellent implementation of a touchscreen phone. TouchWiz uses a variety of intuitive touch controls, e.g. tap, sweep, drag and drop operations as well as an on-screen qwerty keyboard. The screen uses tactile feedback to help you feel your way around the menus and controls, and even hard-core texters should be happy with the result. The iPhone may have paved the way in touchscreen UI design, but Samsung have followed very well.
The Omnia is a smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1. This has a number of advantages. Firstly, the user interface will be familiar to PC users, even including a mobile version of Internet Explorer for web browsing. Secondly, the system enables convenient access to Office documents such as PowerPoint, Excel and Word (for editing as well as viewing). Thirdly, you can download third-party applications and install them on your phone. The phone comes pre-installed with very comprehensive personal organiser functions. The touchscreen user interface can sometimes be a little slow and more complicated to use than conventional phones, but we've got to say just how impressed we are by its robustness. Most smart phones crash and freeze regularly, but not the Omnia.
Let's take a look at the multimedia capabilities of the phone now. Summarising in three words: it does everything! Really! Let's consider the spec: A 5 megapixel camera with face-detection autofocus, smile detection (takes a shot when everyone is smiling), auto-panorama, LED flash and digital zoom. It may not have the optical zoom of the Samsung G800, the optics of the Nokia N95, or the xenon flash of the Sony Ericsson K800i, but we would rate it in the top 10 of current camera phones. In any case, it walks all over the feeble camera in the iPhone 3G. The camera can be used as a business card reader too. It also has an excellent video camera (with image stabilisation), and the video playback capability includes Divx support. Of course it's a 3G phone with video calling too. The music player is very good and supports nearly all formats, and an FM radio is included too. Web browsing is also an enjoyable experience on the Omnia, with fast HSDPA downloads, the large touchscreen, and advanced Opera browser all working together to provide a good experience. The Omnia also comes with GPS navigation built in.
One of the outstanding features of the Omnia is the absolutely huge memory that it supports. Available in a choice of 8 or 16 Gbytes, it also has a microSD memory card slot, enabling an additional 8 Gbytes to be added. This means that you can store a huge amount of music or video (around 8,000 songs or 23 DVD-quality films) and you can even store up to 120 Mbytes worth of text or MMS messages.
The battery life is very good too, which is quite a surprise for a touchscreen phone with so much functionality. We doubt Samsung's official figures of 450 hours standby however.
Connectivity is unbeatable, with a choice of Bluetooth, USB and Wi-Fi.
Really, the Omnia is an amazing phone, and it's no surprise that it's moved right to the top of the best seller charts at launch. Touchscreen phones are the hottest product in 2008, and the Omnia is arguably the best so far. If you fancied the new iPhone or the LG Viewty, you should really be looking at the Omnia instead. The only issue is the Windows Mobile operating system, which is very powerful, but makes the menus on the Omnia more complex than a conventional phone. But even so, this is definitely a 5 star phone!!!
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