Samsung Omnia Review

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by Franz Bicar

The Samsung Omnia is arguably one of the most sought after smartphones of 2008. Along with the RIM BlackBerry Bold and Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, the Samsung Omnia has made news as one of the alternatives to the very successful iPhone 3G. The Samsung Omnia couldn’t boast of its touch screen feature, after all, the Samsung Instinct couldn’t quite make it. However, Samsung’s TouchWiz interface has piqued the curiosity of a lot of people. This feature brings drag-and-drop widgets for the Today screen and provides an extra level of device customization. Its not as slick as the iPhone but it does make Windows Mobile much easier to use. As an added bonus, the smartphone is loaded with productivity and multimedia features that truly make it an all-in-one device that will satisfy both consumers and mobile professionals.

For now, the Samsung Omnia is available only in Europe. But pretty soon, it will be available to a lot of countries so we all just have to wait.

The Omnia is a beautiful smartphone, no doubt about that. It is both simple and elegant. It has an attractive black-and-slate silver chassis and slim candy bar design that measures 4.4 inches tall by 2.2 inches wide by 0.4 inch deep and weighs 4.4 ounces. While light and compact, it has a nice solid construction and feels comfortable to hold and use as a phone.

On the outside, the phone is very simple and has a minimalistic design. There aren’t a lot of external controls and it focuses more on its touch screen capabilities. The Omnia features a 3.2-inch diagonal TFT screen with a 262,000 color output and 240×400 pixel resolution. The display isn’t as large as the Instinct’s or the iPhone’s. The screen, however, is sufficient for most tasks, and very easy to read and vibrant.

For text entry, you can either use the full QWERTY keyboard, the Block Recognizer, or the Transcriber. The touch screen is mostly responsive and offers haptic tactile feedback that lets you know that your touch has registered with vibrations. You can adjust the intensity of the feedback as well as choose from various vibration rhythms under the VibeTonz folder in the Settings menu. In addition, the Omnia’s display has a built-in accelerometer so the screen will rotate from portrait to landscape mode when you turn the phone.

As mentioned, its not the touch screen features that makes the Omnia unique. It is, however, Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface. TouchWiz allows for an extra level of personalization on your Home screen. There is a tray located on the left side with various applications, such as the clock, music player, photo gallery, games, and notepad. You can then drag and drop these widgets to the main screen so they’re easily accessible to you every time you fire up your phone. Once you’ve customized the phone to your liking, you can collapse and hide the tray by tapping the arrow button. Beyond the Home screen, there’s also the Main Menu page that organizes the major applications in a nice user-friendly view.

The Omnia doesn’t look like a traditional Windows Mobile device, but it does run on Windows Mobile 6.1 with all the usual trimmings, including the Microsoft Office Mobile Suite and support for Microsoft’s Direct Push Technology for real-time message delivery and automatic synchronization with your Outlook calendar, tasks, and contacts via Exchange Server. The Omnia can also be configured to access your POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts. There are plenty of other PIM tools to keep you on task and organized, including a task list, a task manager and switcher, a smart converter, a calculator, and a PDF reader, among other things.

For Web browsing, you could use Internet Explorer Mobile but the Samsung Omnia also ships with the Opera Mobile Web browser, which many find to be a superior browser. There’s also Windows Live integration and a Google Launcher that gives you quick access to search, Gmail, and Google Maps. Unfortunately, there’s no Flash support. As far as connecting to the Web, you can use the smartphone’s integrated Wi-Fi or any EDGE network.

Phone features include quad-band world roaming, a speakerphone, conference calling, text and multimedia messaging. The phone book is limited only by the available memory, and there’s room in each entry for multiple numbers, e-mail addresses, instant-messaging handles, and birthdays. For caller ID purposes, you can assign a picture, one of 20 polyphonic ringtones, or a group ID. Bluetooth 2.0 is also onboard for use with mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets, hands-free kits, object exchange, and dial-up networking. And no need for a Bluetooth GPS receiver, since the Samsung Omnia has assisted GPS.

Multimedia plays a big role on the Omnia. As an alternative to the standard Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, Samsung includes something called the Touch Player, which features a nicer user interface and a functionality similar, but not as streamlined, as the iPhone’s Coverflow. Supported music and video formats include MP3, WMA, AAC, eAAC+, MP4, 3GPP, H.264, and DivX/Xvid.

Other goodies include podcast support, a streaming media player, and an FM radio, though you have to use the included headset for the latter. As for memory, the Samsung Omnia comes in two flavors: 16GB or 8GB. Either way, you should have plenty of storage; plus, you have the microSD/SDHC expansion slot, which accepts up to 16GB cards.

The Omnia comes equipped with a 5-megapixel camera with a slew of advanced features. In addition to video recording and digital zoom, you get a flash, auto focus, and face detection. For still images, there are three quality settings and six size options. You have a grand total of 15 shooting modes, ranging from sports to sunset to fireworks as well as white balance adjustment, various effects, ISO settings, and much more. You can even geotag your photos with the embedded GPS radio. In video mode, you don’t get as many tools, but you still get three size and three quality choices.

Picture quality, in the Omnia, is quite impressive. Objects come in clear and defined in photos, and the camera response time is also good. Video quality is also better than most camera phones out there. Once done, you can, of course, send your photos via e-mail or multimedia message. The Omnia also has a Digital Frame application that displays the time and date, while rotating through your photo gallery in the background. Finally, you get TV-out capabilities and a video editing application is included on the device in case you want to make a quick movie on the spot.

Sources:
http://www.phonearena.com
http://www.gsmarena.com
http://www.i4u.com