Samsung SGH-
i900-Omnia is an outstanding cell phone, which tries to compete with iphone. It is not like iPhone, which is good, as iPhone is successful mostly due to marketing. New
iPhone 3G is not that fast, it is not useful for navigation in car, it does not have a good camera and so on. But it has a fantastic user interface and it is an Apple cell phone, which does the trick. On the other hand Omnia is better, yet still it is not as popular nor famous.
Omnia is similar to iPhone in many ways. It has very few buttons, just a couple of function buttons, as Omnia has a touch screen. Though it is not necessary to control the phone via touch screen, because the phone features 3 ways of input. The first and the most obvious one is controlling the phone with fingers via touch screen, the second one is controlling it with plastic pen again via touch screen. The third option is to control the phone via a special pressure sensitive button located at the bottom of the phone, which reacts similar to the one used in SGH-i780. This button, on which you can also press/click in order to confirm your selection, is very similar to those buttons used in laptops instead of a mouse. With sliding with your finger over that button you move the mouse cursor in desired direction. This is very useful when you have to select some small buttons on screen, which is not a very easy task, especially if you have a bit bigger fingers. Most of the problems are cause by operating system Windows Mobile. Even though people at Samsung have done their best to adjust user interface and many applications to a larger surface (the size of a finger) you will still sooner or later come across problems with using the phone with fingers. And because Windows Mobile 6.1 never was designed for control via fingers you have to use either plastic pen or mouse cursor (that special button). The problem at Omnia is that the phone does not have a pen holder, so the pen is just hanged like a pendant. Which many people, including myself dislike.
User interface is quite good. You can control the phone with fingers which gives you much more freedom compared to controlling it with pen. The display is in stand-by mode the same as at SGH-F480, which means it features widgets, small applications (clock, calendar, music player...), which you can freely arrange on the display. In order to enter the main menu you either have to press Main menu button, which is located at the bottom-right side of the display or you have to click the button on the right side of the phone. The main menu displays us 12 large buttons and from then on it is not such a pleasure to use this phone. Despite the fact that the font size is much bigger than it was originally designed in Windows Mobile, using Omnia is still not even nearly as easy and pleasurable as it is to use iPhone. I am not saying that Samsung has not done its job properly, I am just saying that it is hard to over look the fact that the operating system was originally designed for control via pen. I know I am repeating myself, but small buttons are very annoying.
Contact list, call diary, application for watching photos, camera interface, special music player Touch Player - all these and some other applications can normally be used without a pen. Some navigation solutions are the same as iPhone's (like browsing through photos by horizontally moving your finger around the display,...), some are unique to Samsung sand some are Microsoft's.
Samsung paid a lot of attention to data input which is very good. The on-screen
QWERTY keyboard has quite narrow, but useful buttons. Display's good sensitivity and a couple of days of practice makes writing with this phone very easy.
This phone is equipped with literally everything, so I have nothing to complain about. Omnia has motion detector, which automatically rotates the display for 90 degrees according to the position of the phone. You can turn that option off, if it goes on your nerves. When testing the camera I was absolutely surprised at the astonishing quality of the photos. Omnia truly has some of the best cameras available. It does a great job at macro-photographing. The only thing is that the photos sometimes are not as sharp as they are if they are captured with a compact camera, but still photos are outstanding for a cell phone. On the other hand I was very disappointed with video quality, which can capture a maximum of 15 frames per second at VGA resolution.
Samsung has ensured that sound and everything related to it is of great quality. The music player is one of the best music players that cell phones have, the quality of the sound is also above average. The phone is equipped with 8 or 16 GB of memory, depending on which version you buy. And if that is not enough for you, you can expand the already enormous memory with a microSD card (the disadvantage is that it is beneath the battery, so in order to insert/change/remove microSD card you need to turn the phone off and remove the battery). The phone also features an excellent radio. If you have Omnia you really do not need any other music player.
Besides that, Omnia is also very good for watching videos. With a 3,2 inch display you can enjoy watching films even in DivX format, as the phone completely supports DivX, so there is no need to install additional software. You just transfer a DivX movie on Omnia and Omnia will play it, it as simple as that. You can also connect this phone to TV.
One of the best features of this magnificent phone is web browser Opera Mobile 9.5, which is at least for now, available only for cell phones with Microsoft OS and a touch screen. The browser is excellent and makes surfing on the internet on a relatively small screen a very pleasurable thing to do. Merely sliding around the page with your finger, zooming in with a double click (pressure) and the amazing speed at which pages are loaded ensures you enjoy browsing. Nevertheless there are some disadvantages, like flash animations are still not completely supported, while Nokia's Minimap has no problems with flash animations.
It has quite a good GPS with A-GPS function. I got no navigation software, except for Google Mobile, which is nearly totally useless in some countries.
Omnia is a great fully equipped cell phone, which has few real opponents. But it has an interface, which still does not completely support control with fingers. Though on the other hand, if you neglect the impact of Windows Mobile, then Omnia is a cell phone, which is way better than iPhone. Besides all these things it is also equipped with
HSDPA (7,2 Mbps), Wi-Fi and a fast Marvell processor, which ensures that OS runs smoothly. All in all it is a great phone and I really enjoyed owning it. If you are clumsy and if you have quite big fingers than try to test this phone before you buy it, to see whether or not will you encounter major or minor problems with using it. Otherwise this phone is worth buying.
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