Samsung , with its Omnia i900: a Windows Mobile smartphone with an excellent user interface and a bevy of features is looking to take some mighty smartphones down to fight arnea. The Omnia is certainly a fashion statement. The handset is finished in a metallic, mirror-style surface on the front, and the rear contrasts nicely thanks to matte black plastic. However, the surface is prone to scratches and marks; after a few days’ use our review unit looked as though it was already a few months old. While the iPhone 3G’s edges are easily scratched, the screen certainly isn’t and this is where the Omnia lets itself down.
The Omnia is controlled largely via a finger-operated touch screen, but Samsung has also included a number of other buttons. Answer and end call keys, menu button, volume controls and a camera key are all present. An unusual feature is a finger mouse: this small square acts as a mouse when you drag your finger across it and even brings up a mouse cursor on the screen when it’s activated in the settings. We preferred to have this turned off, though, as sliding your finger across or up/down means it acts as touch-sensitive navigational pad.
Samsung certainly deserve plaudits for the interface. While this is a Windows Mobile phone, it’s been skinned with a far more user-friendly system, dubbed TouchWIZ. This displays a line of widgets on the left edge of the home screen, and you simply press and drag icons from the panel to the main area to use that particular program or function. Additionally, the main menu consists of a 4×3 grid of labelled, colourful icons; there is also a fully customisable shortcut menu, which allows you to add your most frequently used applications. When configured and tailored to your needs, you shouldn’t need to use the regular Windows Start menu very often — a godsend considering the frustrating nature of the regular Windows Mobile interface.
Samsung i900 Omnia is equipped with a large 3.2″ 65K-color display with a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels. As with most PocketPCs, picture quality isn’t really impressive. Not that it is too bad either but we’ve seen Samsung do much better on their feature phones.
The display resolution can also be considered somewhat of a problem at times. Wide QVGA might be great for watching widescreen movies, web browsing and viewing photos but it does bring up some compatibility issues. For example, we had quite a hard time starting the iGO 2008 navigation software on the Omnia. We guess similar issues will arise with other applications too.
In terms of sunlight legibility, Samsung i900 Omnia is also far from its prime. It’s really hard to see anything on the display outdoors on a sunny day, and finding a proper angle for working with the phone is near impossible. This has a particularly negative effect on photography, as you can hardly see the viewfinder at times.
Despite Samsung’s efforts, there is certainly plenty more work to do. You are often left trying to press ridiculously small icons and buttons that were designed for a stylus. In addition, the widget system can’t be customised and it’s often troublesome to identify which widget relates to each program without making it active. Interestingly, Samsung does include a stylus in the package, but there is no place to store it on the actual handset. Instead it dangles annoyingly on the left side when attached. The general speed of the handset could also be improved; it’s reasonable considering this is a Windows Mobile handset, but it’s still slower than plenty of other smartphones with similar specifications.
A step further takes you down to Windows Mobile
Once you get past the Home screen and all the finger sweeps, all you are left with is the good old Windows Mobile. Stress here is definitely on “old”, much less so on “good”.
Samsung however have made some efforts in remedying its usability too. Some of the most used system settings, contacts management, and the messaging department have all benefited, as well as the image and web browsing.
The Start menu • viewing the standard Programs and Settings menus on Samsung Omnia
Samsung have decided to extend the touch interface to some of the Windows Mobile system settings. The options of the standard OS are usually displayed with a minute font and small checkboxes or sliders that are not really comfortable to set unless you pick up the stylus.
The Samsung Omnia Home screen gives access to the Wireless manager allowing users to turn connectivity options on and off, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. You can also turn on the “Flight” and “Vibrate only” modes from here.
You further have the option to toggle the auto screen rotation and the mouse pointer on and off. The USB connectivity mode (Active Sync or Mass Storage) is also configurable from the Settings tab on the Home screen. The last thing that you can toggle on and off here is the the camera LED mode, which doubles as a flashlight.
The Phone application of the Samsung i900 Omnia offers a large dial pad but probably its most useful feature is the Smart dialing. With Smart dialing you hardly ever need to go to the Contacts list in order to dial a number – just start typing a name or a number and you get all the matching entries from both the contacts list and the calls log.
Samsung have gone so far in replicating a regular phone’s dial pad, that even a long press on the # key starts the “Vibrate only” silent ringing profile.
Text messaging is a frustrating affair. While
the on-screen keyboard has been given a facelift from the standard Windows Mobile keyboard, the touch screen isn’t as responsive as we’d have liked. We often had to resort to pressing multiple times, as well as pressing much more firmly than is usually required, in order to type efficiently.
Samsung seems to have taken inspiration from Nokia’s N-Series and thrown everything bar the kitchen sink into the Omnia. In addition to providing all the features and benefits of Windows Mobile 6.1, this unit is HSDPA capable, and features a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a built-in GPS receiver, and it comes with 8GB of internal memory as well as a microSD card slot (annoyingly located behind the rear cover). Unfortunately, the 16GB model is yet to hit our shores and Samsung couldn’t comment on its availability.
The Samsung Omnia is the first DivX certified Windows Mobile device, so you get DivX playback straight out of the box on the same Touch Player that is used for music playback. Now there’s some confusion roaming around that the Omnia has XviD support too, but we’ve played with a total of four different units – each at different stage of developement and XviD support was not present on any of them.
For a wider range of supported video formats however, you should pick a third-party solution. We opted for the popular commercial Core player, since the free TCPMP player didn’t run, probably due to some incompatibilities with Windows Mobile 6.1.
Samsung i900 Omnia turned out pretty good at near VGA-res XviD video playback – we played a DVD rip intended for desktop PC playback and luckily there were no skipped frames.
Furthermore, the Samsung Omnia has a widescreen display that is generally better at widescreen videos and with a slight zooming in, you get almost fullscreen playback.
FM radio is superb
The Omnia sports a built-in FM radio and it naturally requires the headset to be plugged-in.
The FM radio has an excellent interface, much like the rest of the multimedia players aboard, and is highly touch optimized. And it’s packed with pretty much every feature you would need.
There are two separate lists for stored stations – they can both store unlimited number of stations. You can also place shortcuts to six favorite radio stations on the main screen.
The Radio player can run in the background, automatically pausing during calls, and broadcasts can be easily recorded with rather acceptable audio quality at 128kbps and 44000 kH
Samsung i900 Omnia CPU is clocked at 624Mhz and it indeed pays off. The Omnia fares superbly against most of our software benchmarks and the system response is great.
Probably the most pitched feature of the i900 Omnia is its touch-optimized interface. And indeed we welcomed most of the changes and custom solutions introduced by Samsung. Although this is their first attempt at custom Windows Mobile interfaces, they have a lot of experience with full Touch UI handsets, which was obviously put to use.
Beside the thumbable interface, the Omnia offers massive embedded storage clearly stating its multimedia orientation. The iPhone was among the first devices to pack 4GB, 8GB and 16GB of onboard memory in a similar fashion to the popular Apple iPods. Windows Mobile devices are now obviously taking up and the Samsung i900 Omnia has two versions – one with 8GB, and another with 16GB worth of storage.
Windows Mobile cameraphone, now that’s a firstThe Samsung i900 Omnia packs a really nice 5 megapixel camera, which produces images with a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. It comes equipped with autofocus, digital image stabilizer, face recognition, smile detection, and geotagging courtesy of the built-in GPS receiver. The LED flash next to the camera lens completes the tally.
The Omnia camera shoots in landscape mode and makes use of the dedicated camera key. It’s got an intuitive user interface that makes changing settings on-the-go a breeze.
As we already pointed out, the Samsung i910 Omnia is a really capable cameraphone. It produces crisp and tack sharp images with balanced processing and precise colors. The Omnia is probably the first PocketPC we’ve seen to produce impressive camera samples and we think it’s safe to assume it’s got the best camera among PocketPCs out there.
We’ve had our share of pre-release Omnias and we saw improvement in image quality each time – especially in color rendering. Otherwise, resolution and detail have been consistently high with each unit – those can easily rival the Nokia N95 8GB.
We now finally have a retail unit in our hands but the camera performance is still not perfect. Some of our images seem to have some sort of tint or reduced contrast – especially those taken with some of the preset shooting modes.
We guess all these minor glitches should be fixed by a software update later on. For now, image quality is not perfect in all shots but it shows potential that’s not to be overlooked.
Since the Omnia display has a different aspect ratio than its camera sensor, the viewfinder doesn’t take up the whole screen estate. Thus it easily fits two columns of controls on the left and right side of the viewfinder. You can of course opt for a fullscreen viewfinder, but this would crop the live feed from the sensor to fit the display. The resulting images however have standard resolution and don’t come out cropped.
And finally, the built-in GPS receiver allows the i900 Omnia to make a nice in-car/walk-around GPS navigation unit, provided you install some software for the purpose.
So overall, with the Samsung i900 Omnia we are looking at a really nice package – full of goodies for both the high-tech and the style-conscious customers but we are yet to see how it delivers on all those fronts.
Frustratingly, the Omnia’s multimedia support is let down by Samsung’s decision to use a proprietary charger/headphone port, rather than a separate 3.5mm jack. Thankfully, an adapter is included in the sales package that allows you to use standard headphones, but the single port means you can’t charge and listen to music simultaneously.
Loaded with connectivity goodies
PocketPCs are usually known for offering great connectivity options and the Samsung i900 Omnia makes no exception – HSDPA 7.2Mpbs, Wi-Fi and stereo Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR are all on board.
Currently targeting Europe/Asia, the Omnia has quad-band GSM and HSDPA 2100 MHz support. But with eyes set on the American market, there will be a localized (American 3G) version of the handset with 850/1900MHz HSDPA support.
USB 2.0 support is also present of course, but the Samsung Omnia loses a point in its implementation for several reasons:
Also present is DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) compatibility. A feature that should be standard on all Samsung devices in the near future, devices equipped with this standard can network to other products, such as televisions. Samsung has demonstrated the Omnia connecting to its latest Series 9 television, allowing the handset stream multimedia to the TV wirelessly. Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG are other phone manufacturers that are members of the DLNA alliance.
You can stay in touch with us at Facebook or Twitter to keep yourself updated of news related to world of Technology (Download and Tutorials for Android, iOS, Windows 7 + News from the camp of Google, Microsoft, Apple).
Promotion : Android Mag
No. 11 2012 Issue