Samsung Omnia review

The long-awaited Samsung i900 Omnia has finally arrived in India. Since the Apple iPhone thing, Omnia was the much-awaited phone in this market.

However, the long wait by the Indian customers didn't bear much fruit as the Omnia seems to be too pricey, considering the Indian purchasing trend. The Samsung Omnia 24 GB is marketed at Rs 37,990 and the 32GB model is priced at Rs 39,990.

If we forget the price for a moment then the Omnia looks and feels solid. The 3.2-inch touchscreen dominates the front of the handset with call answer and end keys, plus a touch sensitive optical mouse pointer below it.

The biggest flaw of the Omnia though is that the handset runs on Windows Mobile. Although currently there's no smartphone alternative operating system until Symbian launches a touchscreen version, you just can't get over the irritation of having to use Windows Mobile.

Samsung has done very well to hide the OS with its own skin, replacing the somewhat antiquated icons with something a little more colourful, but there are still huge defects with the speed at which anything happens.

Most apps take three or four seconds to load up which is disappointing when you compare it to say, the iPhone, or even a non-touchscreen Symbian device. The Photoslide photo album viewer and media album are possibly the most irritating applications on the phone. Loading up pictures is fine, but zooming in and exploring the image closeup is just painful. Photos take ages to 'process' and until then the images are just pixelated shots. The accelerometer is just as sluggish too.

Typing on the device is quite a task, but with a staggering seven different input modes including a Windows keyboard, a Samsung keyboard (with slightly bigger keys), three handwriting recognition functions and two keypad options, you're sure to find one you can get on with. You'll have to use the stylus rather than your finger though because the interface of all options doesn't cater for finger operation.

The five-megapixel camera is top quality though, with an impressive selection of extra modes including Blink detection, Smile detection and panorama mode where eight consecutive photos are taken in a row.

Blink and Smile detection are both a little unreliable, while panorama is clever but will only produce a shot in VGA resolution rather that the full eight-megapixel.

The specification of the i900 Omnia is very similar to the i8510. Both are available in 8GB and 16GB capacities, both feature A-GPS with Google Maps, WiFi, HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps, depending on network support and DivX/XviD support.

However, India has to wait quite a few more months (could be more than 12 months) to get a feel of the 3G capability on this phone as we dont have 3G services available in the country right this moment.

Like most Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional devices, the Omnia comes preinstalled with Pocket Office which is a handy app for editing and viewing documents. One great success is the integration of an Opera browser rather than Internet Explorer, which will please a fair few people.

The optical mouse pad below the screen means you can navigate around websites seamlessly, although the accelerometer for viewing web pages in landscape format doesn't always respond instantly, and sometimes you'll have to tap the handset on a hard surface to make the screen change orientation.

One function that is often missing on higher-end handsets is a TV out port. The Omnia does thankfully feature one, which means you can view videos or pictures on your TV simply by plugging in the TV out cable. This is certainly a useful added extra - but unfortunately the TV out cable doesn't come included in the box.

The biggest success on the Samsung F480 Tocco was the widgets interface, and it's no different on the i900 Omnia. This allows you to drag and drop shortcuts onto the homescreen by dragging them from a taskbar on the left side of the screen onto the handset's 'desktop'.

Not only does this mean you have really quick access to your favourite apps, but it also means that you can see everything you consider to be important by just glancing at the screen. It's much easier to use in comparison to the usual Windows Mobile interface, and looks much tidier unless you litter the homescreen with too many widgets.