The Samsung i900v Omnia

I have not been a fan of Samsung, just because I had always thought that their phones lacked the x-factor and generally were more for the technology challenged people. Their user interfaces across most of their models have always been the same and but a few facelifts nothing was inspiring or created that feeling of wow when you held their phones.

The Samsung i900v Omnia

When the Omnia first poped up in YouTube with the Samsung freaks doing the unveiling and unpackaging, I saw it and brushed it off as another attempt at the iPhone, don’t get me wrong I still don’t like the iPhone but what so many manufactors have done is build mobiles to challenge it when instead they should have been building mobiles that wow!

Which is why now after having an Omnia, I have to give Samsung a little credit. They did not bring the Omnia out with the advertising of iPhone eater or iPhone challenger, instead they brought it out with “hey check out what happens when you take Samsung and add some Microsoft!”. Yes there will be a few people who have written up a blog or two and try to challenge the iPhone at all angles, the trust is, the Omnia was not built for that purpose!

The Omnia is a great phone for the most part of it, I first used Windows Mobile on my HTC Touch and loved the OS, navigating was a little tricky I must confess and whenever you have a touch screen phone, it’s going to be a problem. Samsung tried to improve on this by creating their trackpad which is a fancy name for a mouse track, much like you would have on a laptop. A small square allows you to move a mouse around the screen anytime, so those difficult to reach places with your finger are sorted.

It’s not all praises though, as the phone has moments of sluggishness and the worst possible browsing experience. iPhone have mastered the touch screen and I think that the other manufactors that want to target this market need to take a page out of the iPhone.

The Omnia browser is extremely difficult to control and navigate and what’s worse is trying to zoom in and out of a web page, it’s crazy. Allbeit I understand that the web was not make for wap but surely there is someone at Samsung that tested this phone and thought, man it’s difficult to scroll down a page, 95% of the time I end up clicking something I don’t want to as I try to fight my way down a page.

Samsung fans are going – “You idiot, did you try the mobile view” to them I say – morons! The bloodly mobile view just makes things worst.

Fine so Samsung need to work on the scrolling thing, but just remember it’s pretty much everywhere – the music needs to scroll the playlist, the Garmin needs to scroll the map, photos, web, there is a lot.

Another problem I have is that while Samsung have PC Studio which is your windows interface when your phone is connected, they have not created one for the Omnia, instead you have to use ActiveSync, which is fine if you have Windows Vista on your pc and crap if you are still running XP. Samsung should have negotiated a better deal on connectivity with Micosoft.

Apart from that everything else on the phone is great, the music player is excellent, the screen is clear and the motion sensor – accelerometer as commonly known is well animated when your screen rotates, which is a nice feature. Also the size and weight is excellent.

Best feature yet – it’s Windows Mobile. Once you get past the sync issues, the rest is a breeze. The model I have a is Vodfone Live handset which has it’s own perks I guess.

Overall the phone is good and Samsung have done well on what HTC started, if they can just fix the few minor issues, they would go up in ratings big time.

If I have to rate the Omnia I think I would give it a solid 6/10.