Samsung Omnia HD (4)
GPS and Mapping
Samsung are highlighting the location/GPS abilities of the Omnia HD. A collection of applications, referred to generically as Samsung LBS, will be available in their own folder in the Omnia’s application launcher. The applications include Gypsii – an application that allows you to share your position and favourite landmarks with friends, GPS+ – an enabler for assisted GPS, Navigation – a Samsung branded version of Route 66, Travel guides, Maps, Traffic information, Weather and Routes.
Navigator offers a full car and pedestrian navigation service – a free trial is included, but for ongoing use you’ll have to pay for a full license. Since the Omnia HD includes a compass, your orientation is displayed on the map at all times, this is especially useful in pedestrian mode. The application also includes an extensive point of information database with integrated search.
We were unable to test the location applications on this occasion, but they are an important part of the Omnia HD package and we will take a fuller look at the various applications when we do our full review. In general they are a good example of the way Samsung are including more bundled applications and services, giving closer parity with the Nokia devices (bundled with Ovi services) than was previously the case.
Web
The Omnia HD uses the standard S60 5th Edition web browser, as first seen on the 5800. The browser has been optimised for finger touch, with the large pop-out shortcut panel used to access many of the browser key functions. The software changes are welcome, but the biggest change, compared to earlier phones, is provided by the increased screen size and resolution. With a greater amount of screen real estate available, more of a page can be displayed at one time, and, perhaps even more importantly, the extra physical size means you can zoom out on a page and see more, yet still comfortably read the text being displayed. The capacitive screen makes scrolling easy, a light brush across the screen is all that is required, although two hands are almost essential for long browsing sessions. Unfortunately there’s no continuous kinetic scrolling – something that, as recently demonstrated by Nokia on the N97, would make a sensible addition.
Samsung have added a number of customisations to the S60 Browser. The best of these is a zoom in/out shortcut; holding a finger on the screen pops up two zoom ‘icons’ and if you move your finger upwards you zoom in, if you move it downwards you zoom out. It’s a simple idea, but it works very well – it makes it possible to move round a page relatively quickly and goes some way to overcoming the inherent resolution limitations in mobile devices. Another example of Samsung’s customisation is the mini thumbnail overview that is displayed, showing where you are scrolling on the page. This was available on some of Samsung earlier S60 products and is especially useful when moving around larger pages. Samsung have also added a number of visualisations (swirling 3D effects) when switching between pages in the history list – they don’t add any functionality, but it does help reduce the perception of a delay between page loads.
Overall, the performance of the browser was impressive – even on larger pages, scrolling and rendering remained reasonably smooth, although there’s still room for improvement. The version of the browser shown at MWC was different to that at our later hands-on; it appears that the browser is still being developed, so we can’t say with certainty what features the final retail release will have. We’ll revisit the browser in more detail in a later review.
As you would expect, with a S60 handset, there’s full support for Flash content, either in the browser or packaged separately (Flash Lite 3.1). Web Runtime (WRT) with device service integration (e.g. the ability to read GPS information) is also fully supported – we’re expecting this to be a significant enabler of applications going forward. For example, it’s very likely that the Omnia HD will, in the UK market, be getting the WRT-powered BBC iPlayer.
Samsung TouchWiz and Photo Contacts
The Omnia HD includes Samsung’s TouchWiz home screen technology; it acts as a replacement for the standard S60 home screen (Active Idle). TouchWiz is the generic name that Samsung applies to a ‘widget-based’ homescreen, which is used across a broad portfolio of devices. This includes both other open mobile platforms (e.g. Windows Mobile) and Samsung’s proprietary software platform. Samsung uses it to create a common UI and ‘identity’ across its portfolio of mobile devices. It facilitates easy access to common phone functions, onboard software and services, and shortcuts to web based services.
The homescreen consists of three distinct areas: the widget toolbar, the desktop and the bottom toolbar. The widget toolbar is a scrollable ribbon and ‘holds’ the widgets that can be used on the homescreen, while the desktop ‘contains’ the active widgets. Widgets can be dragged from the toolbar and ‘dropped’ on to the desktop; widgets can be arranged by dragging them to the desired location. The bottom toolbar of the home screen has four on-screen buttons: Telephone (brings up the dialler), Contacts (opens Contact application), Messaging (opens Messaging application), and Menu (opens application launcher). These are present on both the TouchWiz homescreen and the standard S60 application launcher. These three elements are consistent across almost all of Samsung’s TouchWiz implementations. However, the Omnia HD has an interesting extra – there are three separate widget desktops, they can be accessed using the number on the top right of the screen. This allows you to use more of the widgets that would otherwise be possible; it could be used to have a homescreen for multimedia, one for personal use and one for business use.
The available widgets range from a simple analogue clock, through Bluetooth shortcut and mini-music player controls, to shortcuts to web-based services. Some widgets acted as simple shortcuts to other applications or settings panels, but some were more involved. For example, there is a music widget which allows you to control the playback directly from the home screen. The Bluetooth shortcut opens up a screen which shows local Bluetooth devices in a ‘radar’ like format. The profiles widget allows you to switch the currently active profile, via a drop down menu, directly from the homescreen. Other widgets include calendar, birthday reminder, digital clock (with time zone), FM radio, calculator, voice memo, alarm and more. The web services widgets we saw (MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Samsung Fun Club) consisted of simple shortcuts to the mobile web versions of the appropriate service, but it is possible we’ll see something more substantial in the future. Samsung recently announced that they were working with Yahoo, Google and Accuweather on a range of different widgets and I would expect more of these partner announcements in the future.
On the Omnia HD, swiping on the screen, from right to left, switches to the application launcher (and vice versa). Swiping from left to right brings up Photo Contacts; this is a photo-based, speed dialler type application and takes the form of a pile of photos, similar to HTC’s TouchFLO equivalent, which you can flick through to select, and communicate, with a contact. You can choose which contacts you want to add, and choose all, or part of, a photo to represent that contact. It is easy to use and customise, but I wonder how much it should be considered novelty UI compared to using the standard Contacts application. The swiping, which Samsung refer to as 3D navigation, is an elegant solution and provides UI eye-candy, but it is probably quicker to use the dedicated homescreen button on the bottom of the device.
Overall, TouchWiz and its associated widgets and components provider a much flashier front end than we usually see on S60 devices and for the device’s target audience that will be very much welcomed. Without using it for an extended period of time it is hard to assess its impact. We’ll be revisiting TouchWiz on the Omnia HD in greater detail in future coverage and will give a fuller opinion then, but for now it is certainly safe to say that it has a great deal of potential.
Samsung recently announced the evolution of TouchWiz (effectively TouchWiz 2.0); it adds better support for ‘rich connected applications’ (web-enabled widgets) and includes the provision of an SDK and IDE which will allow third party developers to create widgets for the TouchWiz platform. The Omnia HD will be using this ‘evolved’ version of TouchWiz, but the exact mechanics of third party support and which features will be supported is currently unclear. However it does suggest that TouchWiz on the Omnia HD has the potential to move in the same direction as the Nokia N97’s widget-based homescreen.
The TouchWiz homescreen is a significant departure from the traditional S60 homescreen, which means Nokia users might feel like it has been grafted on to the platform. However that’s really not the case; there is an impressive level of integration and it offers a significant UI differentiation. For those that think S60 has only a basic homescreen and lacks graphical eye-candy, the TouchWiz solution provides both an elegant and practical response. For existing Samsung users, it offers an immediate feeling of familiarity and ties the Omnia HD very strongly into Samsung Mobile’s look and feel.
Samsung is well known for its multiple software platform strategy. This does offer advantages in flexibility – notably the ability to offer the ‘right’ platform to different markets and target audiences. Samsung’s impressive engineering scale and set up allows it to overcome some of the costs associated with supporting multiple platforms. However, it does not solve the brand and user experience inconsistencies, which are the inevitable result of using multiple software platforms. TouchWiz, at a general level (and as far as consumers are concerned), provides at least a partial answer to this problem. TouchWiz demonstrates, together with customised iconography and styling, how Samsung, despite using different software platforms, can tie together its products into a single portfolio.
Other Software and S60 5th Edition
There are a few more custom Samsung applications shipping with the Omnia HD, in addition to those we have already mentioned. Smart search is a global search tool; it allows you to search the contents of your device as well as the Internet. The application is divided into three ‘tabs’, one tab for on-device search, one for downloads and one for the Internet. The on-device search looks through contacts, logs, images, videos and messages, and you can specify the category you want to search in (e.g. just search contacts, or search all). Global search isn’t a very exciting application, but it has long been a standby of PIM devices and it is absolutely essential if you’ve got a lot of data stored on your phone. There’s also a Download application which will serve as an on-device application store. There are few public details on this at the moment, but we can say it has no relation to Nokia’s Download! application.
Other applications include Dictionary (with support for multiple language translation pairs), and Smartreader (barcode reader and business card scanner). The Omnia HD will also ship with a variety of third party-licensed applications including Zip manager, Quickoffice (view Microsoft Office files), Adobe Pdf (view PDF files), Qik (live video streaming), RoadSync (Microsoft Exchange sync for emails, contacts, and calendar), and Fring (multiple IM, VoIP and presence client). This bundle of third party applications will likely grow before the final release.
The Omnia HD runs S60 5th Edition on Symbian OS 9.4. We commented, at some length, on the move to touch for S60 and the essentials of its implementation in part one of our 5800 preview, so we will not repeat that here. As with the 5800, there’s also optional haptic feedback, a real advantage in my opinion. With S60 come all the standard applications, including Messaging, Contacts, Calendar and so on. You can see more details on these in part 2 and 3 of our 5800 preview.
The Omnia HD uses the default text entry options of the S60 platform – you can choose between a full QWERTY keyboard, virtual alphanumeric keypad, small QWERTY keyboard and handwriting recognition. Handwriting recognition, beyond a few letters, isn’t really practical on a capacitive screen and similarly the (in)accuracy of capacitive touch makes the small QWERTY keyboard tricky to use. The alphanumeric keypad, which includes optional T9 recognition, works very well, but isn’t as fast, at least potentially, as a full QWERTY keyboard. S60’s full screen QWERTY keyboard, with a bit of practice, works reasonably well, but does not really match up to the Apple’s or HTC’s virtual keyboard implementations. Given the potential provided by capacitive screens (multi touch) and the flexibility of S60 (e.g. the plug-in for the FEP) this is really an area I would have liked to seen Samsung customise.
Samsung have made such customisations in other parts of the S60 UI. In general, there are more transitions and eye candy than on Nokia phones. The most significant change is the customised version of the application switcher (accessed by holding down the home key). Rather than a simple list of icons of open applications, it shows a ‘carousel of screens’ of open applications; finger flicks move you around the carousel, touching a screen loads up that application and there’s also an x, in the corner, to close the application. An alternative ‘grid’ view is also provided, which shows all open applications in a 3 x 3 grid – it is somewhat similar to Expose on the Mac. It’s possible to see this as a bit gimmicky, but on the other hand it is a visually, highly effective, demonstration of the multi-tasking capabilities of the phone.
As will be apparent from earlier parts of this preview, Samsung has put an enormous amount of effort into customising the platform, both through UI customisation and application customisations and additions. Earlier Samsung S60 devices had the Samsung style in their hardware, but the software made them feel like Nokia clones. With the Omnia HD, that impression is greatly lessened. Anyone familiar with S60 will feel at home, but so too should customers of Samsung feature phones. Moreover, Samsung have created a significant amount of differentiation between their S60 phones and those of Nokia, something which I regard as essential if they are to find success in the market. Both offer the same basic S60 experience, but there are significant differences between their higher level software and service offerings. These differences will be worth much closer examination. We’ll be reporting on this in more detail, once we have a decent length of real world usage under our belts.
Conclusion
For viewing images and video the Omnia HD’s large, AMOLED backed screen is the best I’ve seen on a mobile device. Similarly its 8 megapixel camera (especially the HD video recording) and audio capabilities (dedicated DSP, 3.5 mm audio jack, stereo speakers, and FM radio) are amongst the best you’ll find on a mobile phone. Taken with its tablet like form factor and comprehensive software package, all of these attributes mean the Omnia HD feels like more of a cross breed between a mobile phone, and personal media player. This cross over package fits in with the current fashion for touch based mobile phones in the tablet form factor; this is a highly visible and talked about market segment. The amount in interest already generated by the Omnia HD is indicative of this, but it is also worth remembering that it is only a small part of the overall market.
In a general sense the Omnia HD faces a number of competitors, including the Apple iPhone v3, Palm Pre, HTC Touch Pro 2, and the Nokia N97. All of these devices are phones, but such functionality tends to be secondary to their other capabilities. Each of these devices have their own twist. For example if you compare the N97 and Omnia HD, which I’m sure many will do this summer, you’ll find they each have their own strength and weaknesses. For some the keyboard will mean the N97 if favoured, others will favour the Omnia HD for its HD video recording or AMOLED screen. Similarly the iPhone boast impressive multimedia consumption and the ‘best-in-class’ iTunes ecosystem, but fails to match the Omnia’s more cutting edge hardware and multimedia features. The Palm Pre promotes social communication and web convergence, but has lesser multimedia capabilities. The Omnia HD offers a device with very strong credentials in multimedia creation and consumption, but one that, perhaps, lacks refinement in other areas. With all of these devices due out between now and the early autumn (and much detailed information still to be filled in), the coming summer holds much promise for gadget lovers!
The focus-driven nature of the S60 5th Edition UI takes a different approach to both the iPhone OS and Android. This, together with the legacies carried over from earlier version of S60, has resulted in mixed reactions from some early previews. Many of these criticisms are unfair or one-sided, but it is fair to say there is room for improvement. The market sucess of the Nokia 5800 suggests that S60 5th Edition is not the anchor that some might assume. While it is certainly possible to make an argument that S60 5th Edition is less suited to very high end devices, until both the Samsung Omnia HD and the Nokia N97 have been tested in the market I think it is premature to come to any conclusions. It may be the customised homescreens and other software tweaks that end up making all the difference in terms of the perception by consumers for both devices. Every device has its UI strengths and weakness, and the UI, while important, is only one part of the equation.
By choosing the Omnia branding for the new device, and highlighting it as one of its three flagship models for 2009, Samsung is also making a statement of intent. Samsung has been quietly building expertise in Symbian phone integration and the i8510 (INNOV8), announced last summer, demonstrated their ability to create cutting edge devices on top of the platform. However, large scale market sucess has been largely absent, caused, at least in part, by a lack of widespread availability and marketing. By choosing to build on top of their sucessful Omnia brand, which originated with a Windows Mobile device of the same name, Samsung are signposting their intent to give a large push to the Omnia HD. There are indications that this will be supported by several media campaigns, from traditional advertising to social media and word of mouth campaigns. Similarly, Samsung are putting plans in place to help support developers and provide an on-device application store. Much will still depend on operator uptake, but with clearly definable market-leading specifications, there’s plenty of scope for operators to push it as an ‘ultimate’ mobile phone.
The Omnia HD is a technical marvel – its gorgeous screen, its HD video recording capability and general multimedia prowess means its stands out from the crowd. Its hardware, while not perfect, is impressive and cutting edge. It is, most definitely, one of a handful of contenders for the super-phone title in 2009. In one sense that alone makes it a ‘good’ phone, but will it be a ‘great’ phone? I think that depends on how good a job Samsung does on the software; both in the release version and in subsequent firmware updates. Samsung’s S60 phones do not have the best track record in this department, but Samsung are planning to provide firmware upgrades for the Omnia HD (definitely via a PC, likely OTA as well). For this issue, only time will tell.
With a preview, based on pre-release hardware and software, it is never fair to draw any final conclusions. But, as we’ve seen over the three parts of this preview, I do think the Omnia HD holds a great deal of promise and will be one of the most talked about Symbian devices of the year.
Samsung Omnia HD (3)
Camera
The Omnia HD’s 8 megapixel still image capture is largely over shadowed by the HD video recording, but is still very impressive. It uses the same sensor as Samsung’s i8510, which we rated as one of the best cameraphones on the market. With the Omnia HD you are getting one of the very best sensors available to a mobile phone and this reflects the Omnia HD’s market position. It may be not so unique as the HD video recording, but image capture is used more frequently than video and therefore is, arguably, more important. 8 megapixels might be more than you really need, but at the moment, outside Japan, the best quality camera overall still tends to tie in with those devices with the most megapixels.
The presence of a single LED flash is disappointing, it felt weak compared to some of the dual LED solutions that Nokia and Sony Ericsson have introduced in recent devices. We weren’t able to extensively test the camera, but results should be similar to those from the i8510. The Omnia HD will likely excel in well lit conditions, but may struggle in poorer lighting (though Steve’s itching to pitch it head to head with the upcoming Nokia N86 8MP). Some may wish for a Xenon flash to improve low light performance, but this really would not make sense in a video-centric product.
The camera application has been extensively reworked for S60 5th Edition and is optimised for finger touch use. It is intuitive to use, with a clear icon-based layout supplemented by text labels where necessary. The most common functions and settings are just a few taps away – touching one of the icons on the toolbars on either side of the screen ‘pops-up’ the appropriate options, which are overlaid on the viewfinder’s screen. More extensive options are tucked away in a settings menu, but this too has been redesigned to be finger friendly. Rather than using the standard S60 style, Samsung have used their own expertise (based on their learnings from their standalone products) and the results are impressive.
Finger friendly camera application settings on the Omnia HD
As with other Samsung camera-phones, there’s a whole slew of camera application settings and features. These range from the important (scene mode, flash, geo-tagging, exposure, white balance, ISO speed) to the more fun/gimmicky (panorama mode, smile shot, framing, sepia and so on). Most of the time you will get decent results from fully automatic mode, but it is certainly possible to improve shots and be more creative if you familiarise yourself with the extensive settings.
Sample photos from the Omnia HD; click through for full size images (2MB+).
The camera’s video mode has the Omnia HD’s headline feature – 720p HD recording (1280 x 720). As with high resolution still capture, there was a lag after capturing the video, but that’s not really surprising given the amount of data and processing involved (plus the preproduction status). The video we recorded did show some issues; for example, the frame rate dropped significantly when the video subject was in motion and there were some audio sync issues. Captured videos played back perfectly on the device (an impressive achievement in itself), but as Steve mentioned in his ‘first impressions’ piece there was an audio sync issue when viewing in Quicktime and Windows Media Player on the PC. However, using the open-source VLC resulted in perfect video playback. I’m not sure of the cause of this (likely a mis-step between video and audio encoding streams in the playing application, possibly caused by the formatting of the file), but it is something Samsung would do well to fix before the final release. Quicktime and Windows Media Player are mainstays of the PC and Mac worlds and work fine with HD video from other sources. As you can see from the sample clip below, the overall the quality was decent – akin to the Flip Mino HD. Clearly it will not match a high-end standalone device, but that’s not really the point – it is a massive step up from current mobile phone video capture technology.
Sample Video: 720by480.mp4 (wide VGA (D1), 12MB) and 720p.mp4 (HD, 720p, 23MB)
It was not possible to draw any definitive conclusions in the time we had with the device, but the signs are promising. Furthermore it is likely there will be optimisations and improvements before release. However what we can say is that it does work and is is an amazing achievement. Remember, it is less that seven years since the launch of the Nokia 7650 – and that didn’t even have built in video recording out of the box! HD video recording is a truly impressive technical achievement; in the years to come it will no doubt become very common, but right now it has a very definite wow factor. It is also a relatively easy feature to understand when being sold on the high street – and that makes it easier to sell – it will be, at least at first, the phone that records HD video.
Record in HD 720p video resolution
The video mode of the Camera application has the same on-screen controls as the image mode; these give access to a variety of settings, including turning the flash on and off, setting an exposure level and setting the resolution. There are also several modes, one to limit the video for transmission via MMS, one for slow motion and one for fast motion. In addition to 720p, video can be recorded at 720 x 480 (also known as D1 resolution), 640 x 480 and 320 x 240. D1 resolution is the most significant of these, being identical to NTSC DVD resolution, widely used in many parts of the world. (Compared to 720p) D1 has the advantage of being less processor-intensive to encode, which should mean fewer dropped frames, can be recorded for longer and takes less storage space. For videos being uploaded to web sites such as YouTube, it’s probably a better fit than HD because of the file sizes involved.
For both video and still images, the post capture options have been significantly improved compared to earlier Samsung S60 devices. There is a new media browser application, which can be accessed directly from the camera application and Samsung’s new SharePix service application, which allows you to upload images and video to the web. SharePix’s supported services include Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, MySpace, Friendster and YouTube. In addition to being available in the Camera application, SharePix is also available as a standalone application, should you wish to upload media to the web at a later date. SharePix, which is similar to Nokia’s Share online application, adds very significant value and makes it much easier to make use of media captured on the phone. I would particularly highlight the ability to upload video directly to YouTube as being a potential popular marketing feature point (though we will have to examine the practicalities, given the file sizes involved, in more detail in due course).
Media: Images, Video, Music, Audio
The Omnia HD screen makes for a fantastic image viewer. The standard S60 Gallery application is present, but Samsung have also included their own version: MediaBrowser, which can be used to view both images and videos, is a more versatile and powerful application. It has three main views: default (media appears in a strip across the screen), thumbnail (images appear in three rows of three) and full (image occupies whole screen). You can move between the images either by tilting the device to the left or right or flicking your finger across the screen. In default and thumbnail mode, a finger flick uses kinetic scrolling, in full mode it moves from one image to the next. In all three views, there is also a scroll bar that enables you to move quickly through the images (by default, items are sorted in alphabetical order). Touching an image opens it in full view mode and there are the usual options to manipulate the image in question – sending to the web (SharePix), via messaging or via Bluetooth, editing, zooming, and so on. Touching a video opens the video in the video player and there’s also a tie in with the S60 5th Edition built-in video editor.
Video playback on the Omnia HD is equally impressive. The large physical size of the screen makes things much easier on the eyes than a typical mobile phone. Watching video captured on the device looks very good indeed, but that is the easy part of the video equation. The specifications say the Omnia HD supports the DivX, XviD, H.263, H.264, WMV, MPEG4, RV and FLV formats, but experienced users will know that format support is only part of the story. To get decent looking video playback you often need to optimise video with specific settings (bitrate, audio codec etc.). However what really impressed about the Omnia HD was its ability to handle a whole variety of test video, ranging from mobile optimised H.264, a random WMV file to a FLV file ripped from YouTube. All of this video looked and sounded very good indeed, and the device was able to play it back in full screen (or letterbox mode). This ease of use means people are much more likely to use the Omnia HD as a video playback device. For some video (very high resolution or bitrate, or unsupported formats), or to get the very best results you will still need to optimise and transcode video, but in general the Omnia HD is much more versatile than its predecessors and competition.
Viewing HD video on a TV usually involves a HDMI connection. However, the Omnia HD does not have one of these; instead Samsung promotes DLNA (UPnP) as a way to watch HD videos from the phone on a TV. DNLA is a standard used by many consumer electronics manufacturers to share content between devices over a WiFi connection. There are an increasing number of DLNA compliant devices available, amongst the most common are the Playstation 3 and XBox 360. While DLNA is a workable solution, it is still not commonly used or very well understood by most consumers. If you’ve got a Samsung DLNA-compatible TV then things should be straight forward. However, in our experience, as soon as you start mixing equipment from multiple companies, the odds that it doesn’t work are increased. HD video is a particularly complex area because it requires significantly more network bandwidth than music, images or SD video. Consequently, the positioning of the WiFi hotspot/router, its throughput and its compatibility may also become a factor. In summary, DLNA cannot be considered the same universal solution that plugging in a TV-Out cable is. That is the price you pay for being on the cutting edge. We weren’t able to test this functionality during our time with the Omnia HD, but we will be taking a much closer look at a later date.
(It should be noted that SD video output may be supported via TV out cable, again this will need investigation when we see a production device)
Playing back video recorded on the Omnia HD on an HD TV (directly not via DLNA). Thanks to World of Nokia for this picture.
For music playback, there’s a Samsung ‘skinned’ version of the standard S60 music player. As you would expect, all the mainstream audio formats are supported: MP3, WMA, AAC. A notable addition is the inclusion of a ‘5.1 Ch’ button that activates a custom equalizer/audio setting. There’s a very noticeable difference, even when listening over headphones. From a few sample tracks the music sounded wider and deeper, but such optimisations are very much down to personal tastes.
A welcome addition to Samsung’s S60 software line up is APod, a rebranded version of the Podcasting application from Nokia. Aside from the name, it appears to be identical to the version of Podcasting which comes with the Nokia 5800 and N97. In the past, we’ve criticised the inability (due to certificates and signing) to install some of Nokia’s ‘extra’ S60 applications onto Samsung devices. Clearly there licensing issues involved and, while there’s still room for improvement (Sports Tracker and Internet radio would have been nice inclusions), it is good to see progress in this department. Rounding out the audio features is an FM radio (with RDS support), though in common with most mobiles you will need to plug in a set of headphones to act as an aerial. All of these elements taken together mean that the Omnia HD has an extremely versatile music and audio software package – certainly the best yet on a Samsung S60 device.
Samsung Omnia HD (2)
Introduction
There never seems a shortage of heroes in this industry but every now and then a new breed emerges to change the rules of engagement. Ranks and titles are hard earned and we’ve seen enough contenders that barely deserve a hero’s death. Now, here comes a gadget that knows the best shot at glory is the high-definition one. Will the Samsung Omnia HD be strong enough to bear its name with honor or will it crumble under the weight of expectations?
As all-in-one multimedia touchscreens are battling for dominance, the HD category is now making its way to cellphones. HD is a magical marketing word that has seen as many abuses as it has had just uses. In the Omnia HD case, it’s an insignia of its truly superior rank. It’s not the first time a handset has claimed this tempting acronym, but the Omnia HD hits it where it matters – video recording and playback.
Samsung were the first to announce and release an HD-video-enabled handset. In the not so short time since then, none of their major rivals managed to introduce a competitor. So, all heads are anxiously turned to Samsung to see if they can deliver.
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD official photos
By the way, the Omnia HD comes equipped with everything that Samsung can put on the table. HD video recording and playback is definitely top-notch stuff but these are just the fancy extras on a full battle suit. There’s also a huge AMOLED screen, powerful 600 MHz processor and dedicated graphics chip. The all-in-one count continues with an 8 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, generous 8/16 GB internal storage and DivX/XviD HD playback with subtitle support. Finally, the whole thing runs the latest Symbian S60 5th edition skinned with the new TouchWiz 3D interface.
Take the time to check out this genuine all-rounder.
Key features:
3.7-inch 16M-color capacitive AMOLED touchscreen, 640 x 360 pixels
Symbian S60 5th edition with TouchWiz 3D UI
ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz processor; HW Graphic Accelerator
256MB RAM
8 megapixel auto focus camera with LED flash, geotagging, face detection, smile shot, image stabilizer, Wide Dynamic Range (WDR), ISO 1600
HD 720p@24fps, 720×480@30fps, QVGA time-lapse and slow-mo video recording
Tri-band 3G with HSDPA (7.2Mbps) and HSUPA (5.76 Mbps) support
Quad-band GSM support
Wi-Fi with DLNA technology
Built-in GPS with A-GPS functionality
8/16GB internal memory
Hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
TV out (Standard Definition content only)
FM radio with RDS
Bluetooth and USB v2.0
3.5mm standard audio jack
DNSe audio technology
DivX/XviD video support with subtitles (HD video playback)
Virtual 5.1 channel Dolby surround (in headphones)
Proximity sensor for screen auto turn-off
Accelerometer sensor for automatic UI rotation, turn-to-mute and motion-based gaming
Magnetometer for digital compass
Office document viewer
Full Flash support in the web browser
Main disadvantages:
No xenon flash
No camera lens cover
Sluggish browsing in the image gallery
HD video recording sometimes drops below 24fps or duplicates frames to equal 24
Samsung Mobile Navigator doesn’t come with any maps or voice-guided navigation license
No smart dialing
Touch web browser zooming needs tweaking
Somewhat limited 3rd party software availability
No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)
Well, the Omnia HD is packed with all kinds of goodies, but not without a few setbacks on the way to retail. If the whole thing is put together right though, the i8910 Omnia HD may have every reason to claim its rightful place on the throne as the unchallenged king of HD video.
Some of you must be wondering what took us so long to get an Omnia HD for a proper in-depth review as it’s been around for a while. Well, it’s true and it’s not. Samsung i8910 Omnia HD was released in the end of May through selected carriers but shortly after that Samsung froze production and stopped supplies, reportedly due to software problems. Now, the official release has been announced and the Omnia HD is available worldwide, all bugs fixed…though let us be the judge of that. But anyway, the i8910 Omnia HD is ready to roll.
This is our third and last meeting with the handset and we’re still excited about exploring an industry leading device. The verdict of course is a few pages away, but a device that ticks off the wishlist of high-end features and marries Symbian and TouchWiz is certainly worth a closer look.
Samsung Omnia HD in our office
We hope you’re as keen to join as the Omnia HD is eager to shoot those high-res videos. But first things first, let’s take a look at the design and handling after the jump.
Unboxing the Omnia HD
The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is a high-end multimedia handset, but comes with an fairly standard package. There is the mandatory charger, microUSB cable and a 3.5mm headset. The headset microphone is quite close to the left headphone (like the Apple iPhone headset), but a separate remote (and quite a big one) is found in the middle of the cable. Unfortunately, you cannot control music playback with it.
The only extra thing you get with the Omnia HD is a TV cable, the same 3.5mm one which comes with the Nokia N-series. That said, it’s probably the first time e see a TV-out cable in a Samsung retail package, but hey, we usually deal with prototypes.
Unboxing Omnia HD
The TV-out cable supplied cannot transfer HD content it’s really a regular RCA cable that’s probably at the bottom end when it comes to transferring digital media, but is quite compact and you can hook up to every TV set out there.
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD 360-degree spin
The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is hardly the most compact phone around. In fact the first impression it leaves is of an abnormally wide handset with its 123 x 59 mm. At 12.9mm thickness, it can almost be called slim but it’s by no means light. If that’s the price to pay for this kind of functionality, we guess most people would be willing to make the compromise.
Design and construction
Designing a fully touch-operated mobile phone certainly doesn’t leave too much freedom in the aesthetics department and all of them look more or less identical. The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD doesn’t depart from the standard looks, the metallic frame around the display obviously an attempt to give it a face of its own, but the glossy plastic around the display looks rather cheap.
Most of the front panel is taken up by Omnia HD’s key feature – the 3.7″ 16M-color AMOLED touchscreen enclosed in a glossy metallic frame. The handset uses the capacitive touchscreen technology as opposed to the resistive screen of the first S60 5th edition handset, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The screen is quite sensitive and we’re quite pleased with it in that respect.
3.7″ widescreen AMOLED display
The capacitive technology used guarantees the excellent responsiveness of the screen at the expense of only being able to use your fingers – no stylus, no plectrum, no anything… Still, there are some capacitive screen styluses ot there that are said to do the job, but we haven’t tried them ourselves.
The display of the Samsung i8910 offers amazing picture quality. The resolution of 360 x 640 pixels (the same as the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia N97) is not exactly top-of-the-line but the AMOLED technology does make a difference. The contrast and colors are really impressive and they give a real sharpness to images.
The bad news about the display of Samsung i8910 is that its legibility drops dramatically under direct sunlight. The Omnia HD screen is better by the recent crop of Samsung phones, but still remains inferior to the Apple iPhone displays, for example.
The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD display offers haptic feedback, which makes the touchscreen a passable replacement for a hardware keypad.
The other noteworthy elements at the face of the Samsung i8910 are the video-call camera and the proximity sensor at the top, plus the three hardware keys at the bottom. The proximity sensor is used for locking the display during calls to avoid accidental presses when holding the phone next to your cheek.
A couple of sensors and a video-call camera at the top
The Omnia HD has hardware Call and End keys plus a menu key, much like the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. They are made of plastic (just like the silvery frame around the display). The End key doubles as a power button.
The three keys at the bottom are large enough
On the left side we find the volume rocker, which is adequately sized and quite easy to work with. Next to it is the microSD card slot, which is hot-swap enabled. But of course you’ll hardly need it because of the 8/16 GB inbuilt storage.
Omnia HD is said to support microSD cards of up to 16GB, and this was as far as went testing it. The handset handled a full 16GB microSD card problem-free. We were pleased with the reading/writing speed and the initialization of the full microSD card was very fast.
Omnia HD left side: volume rocker, microSD card slot and lanyard eyelet
The right side of the Samsung i8910 hosts the Hold key (to lock/unlock the touchscreen), the camera key and the microUSB port. It’s a welcome benefit that the phone charges off the microUSB port so you can transfer data and charge your battery simultaneously.
A couple of keys and a microUSB port on the right
At the top of the Samsung i8910 we find a loudspeaker and the 3.5mm standard audio jack. Much like the USB port, the audio jack is hidden under a small lid to keep dust away. The first loudspeaker occupies the center.
One of the loudspeakers is placed right next to the 3.5mm audio jack
The second loudspeaker is located at the bottom (dead center, again), along with the mouthpiece. This layout seems a respectful nod to the Omnia HD’s exceptional video skill, around which everything seems to revolve.
Loudspeakers are perfectly placed for watching videos in landscape mode
The Omnia HD’s rear is all glossy plastic, turning it into a fingerprint nightmare. The battery cover fits firmly into place and there is no creaking when trying to open it.
Along with the Samsung logo, the back side of the Omnia HD also hosts the 8 megapixel camera lens and the LED flash. With video recording so high on the agenda, it’s quite understandable why they went for LED rather than xenon technology. Still the Samsung Pixon12 offers both to cater for stills and video alike.
The battery cover of Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is a fingerprint nightmare
But the sun will shine even on the rear of the Omnia HD and in our case it’s the great 1500 mAh battery found under a cheapo plastic battery cover. Given the AMOLED screen with its low power consumption, the Omnia HD should count on above average battery life. After all, that’s crucial for a multimedia device.
Update:
We’ve managed to clock the Omnia HD battery life in the few days following the publishing of the review and just as expected, it turned out quite a performer. The Omnia HD battery went from full to flat in 72 hours. During those 72 hours we used the handset in a somewhat “normal usage” pattern that included all of the following: 250 min of mp3 playback, 60 min video playback of SD content, 50 min of talking and finally, 40 min of mobile web browsing over 3G. We think, that you would agree that despite the huge screen, battery performance is among the virtues of Samsung Omnia HD.
The 1500 mAh battery should provide better cover for the power hog of a screen
The general build quality of the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD now is lower than expected. The huge AMOLED display is true high end stuff but the plastic bits (especially the battery cover) are below par. The hardware and design changes are a mixed bag really but we guess the multimedia performance will make up for it big time.
Finally, we should again point out that the huge screen real estate calls for some extraordinary body dimensions as well. The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is easily among the largest handsets on the market, even though it’s reasonably slim. Comfortable single-handed operation will definitely be an issue for some users – so a try-before-you-buy is advisable.
The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is on the borderline of smooth single-handed use
TouchWiz’d Symbian OS
The i8910 Omnia HD is Samsung’s first Symbian S60 5th edition-powered touchscreen device. However if you expect its software to be an exact copy of either the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic or the N97 you are going to be very surprised.
At first sight you might not even recognize the Symbian OS under the cheerful TouchWiz UI that’s running on top of it. The customization only stretches to the homescreen and the menu icons but that’s almost enough to give the i8910 Omnia HD the user friendliness of a typical Samsung feature phone.
The default homescreen layout is the TouchWiz one, where you get to fill your homescreen with as many widgets as you like. Those are small programs, shortcuts or just reminders that give you quick access to some of the features of the handset or provide some specific info. Widgets are getting more and more popular and the reason is quite understandable – some of the most frequently used features and services are just a tap away on the homescreen. You can hide those widgets you use least (or don’t use at all), as well as download new ones.
The TouchWiz’d Symbian OS
In fact, you can arrange three completely different homescreens full of widgets. Switching between them is handled by the three small shortcuts at the top right corner, which become active one you slide out the widgets bar.
If you aren’t a great fan of the TouchWiz widgetry there are two more options for the homescreen layout (found under homescreen themes in the menu) – Finger use and Basic.
Finger use is identical to the one found on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. It offers a set of four large and easily thumbable shortcuts that lead to selected applications. The basic theme on the other hand leaves your homescreen completely empty with only the four standard buttons displayed at the bottom – Telephone, Contacts, Messaging and Menu.
The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD also features a nice transition effect between the homescreen, the main menu and the photo contacts app. Those three interchange upon a finger sweep with a transition effect resembling the inner walls of a cube. If you don’t care for transition effects, and you are looking for a bit of extra speed, you can switch that off.
A sweep to the right will take you to the Photo Contacts feature, which is quite neat. It allows you to assign a whole image, or even a cropped part of it, to entries in the phonebook. Sweeping a finger to the left of the widgets screen, opens up the main menu.
Beneath the colorful outfit of the Omnia HD lays the Symbian S60 5th Edition. Quickly maturing it might be, but it is still far from perfect. We have already discussed the inconsistency it has with scrolling (which goes in the way of your finger through a scrollbar in the menus and in the exact opposite direction with some applications).
There’s similar unpredictability when selecting items too. You would normally need a single tap in grid menus and two taps in list menus. While we admit that you might eventually get used to all this, we definitely find those to be major problems with the usability of the S60 5th edition. That randomness causes quite a lot of confusion and is nowhere near the fluent and intuitive interface that the market currently demands.
Most menus of the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD can be displayed as either a grid or a list. The menu organization is pretty intuitive and logical, most items located exactly where you would expect them to be. The two virtual soft keys ensure making your way around won’t be any different than on a regular S60 phone.
The menus can appear as grids or lists
The accelerometer automatically rotates the display of the Omnia HD but it doesn’t work through the menus. Auto-rotation is fairly smooth with a decent fade out effect.
While there is some lag at times (most notably in the gallery – more on that later) the overall performance of the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is remarkable. The 600 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU and the dedicated graphic chip do a fine job indeed powering that massive screen and the results are very pleasing.
The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD has 256MB of RAM – exactly twice as much as the Nokia N97. Now add the snappier CPU and you’ll understand where the better overall performance comes from even with the added weight of the TouchWiz running on top of the Symbian OS.
Pretty good phonebook
Typical for Symbian, the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD comes with a phonebook that can store an unlimited number of entries, each holding as many fields as the users sees fit. You can assign a photo to each contact, or even a video if you wish. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.
The phonebook is typical Symbian
Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any of the names. You can also set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.
Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one.
Editing a contact
The Call log keeps track of your recent communications. The application itself comes in two flavors – accessed by pressing the Call key on the stand-by screen or from the main menu. The first one brings 20 call records in each of its tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls.
If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers (even WLAN connections are included).
Photo contacts a swipe away
As we already mentioned the Omnia HD comes complete with the Photo contacts app, which is an interestingly looking alternative to the phonebook. While it still relies on the regular contact database, the Photo contacts application might save you the effort of ever entering the phonebook again once you’ve filled it up.
Photo contacts
The app itself allows you to tag parts of photos, which can then be used as shortcuts to various contacts. That might be pretty handy if you are into grouping your contacts. You can take a photo of your colleagues and another one of your buddies and than tag each face to its respective phonebook entry. Then you are one photo away from calling everyone in for a poker night at your place.
Photo contacts might not be the most practical application, but it is certainly one of the funniest ways to dial a number.
Telephony: Smart dialing would have been nice
We didn’t experience any problems with the in-call performance of Omnia HD. Reception levels are good on both ends of calls, the earpiece is loud enough and there was no interference whatsoever.
Unfortunately voice dialing is not an option with the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD. Smart dialing is another thing missing and it is even more crucial. It is hardly a deal-breaker since with no keypad present you still need some extra clicks, but we find it quicker than reaching for the phonebook every time.
The virtual dialpad
Thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can silence an incoming call on the phone by simply flipping it over. By the way that works for snooze alarms too.
Thanks to the proximity sensor the screen turns off automatically while close to your cheek. There are four on-screen buttons available on screen during calls – mute, hold, loudspeaker and end call. Form the options menu you can find more settings like lock screen and keys, switch to video call, new call and etc.
We also ran our traditional loudspeaker test on Samsung i8910 Omnia HD. The handset didn’t perform too impressively but still scored a Very good mark meaning we haven’t seen too many louder handsets. You might still want to keep a closer eye on it when you are in noisier environments, though.Speakerphone test Voice, dB Pink noise/ Music, dB Ringing phone, dB Overall score
Apple iPhone 3G 66.1 62.1 71.7 Below Average
Nokia N97 72.8 67.3 75.8 Good
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic 75.7 66.5 68.5 Good
Samsung M8910 Pixon12 75.7 72.8 77.3 Very Good
HTC Magic 70.3 69.5 79.3 Very Good
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD 74.3 74.0 78.7 Very Good
HTC Touch HD 77.7 73.7 76.7 Excellent
Messaging is all fine, but for an email wizard
The messaging department of the Omnia HD is practically identical to the one found on its Nokia touch contemporaries.
The Samsung I8910 Omnia HD supports all common message types – SMS, MMS and email. They all share a common intuitive editor which by this point should be quite familiar to everyone. When composing an SMS, a counter is displayed of characters left from the limit of 160. An indicator in brackets shows the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending.
The message compositor
Once you insert some multimedia content, or an email address is inserted as recipient, the counter is replaced by a data counter showing the size of your email.
The first difference that Samsung I8910 Omnia HD introduces is to omit the dedicated editor for instant recording of audio messages. We weren’t big fans of it anyway so we aren’t going to pretend that we miss it much.
The email client is really nice, able to meet almost any emailing needs. Unfortunately the Omnia HD doesn’t support the easy setup we found in the latest Nokia handsets so you need to input all your account settings manually. It’s not that you configure this every day but it’s nice when the manufacturers save you some work, especially when the work in question involves typing on a touchscreen. Surely this can’t be too difficult a feature for Samsung to implement.
Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported, so you can bet almost any mail service will run trouble-free on your Samsung I8910 Omnia HD.
The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. A nice feature allows you to schedule sending email next time an internet connection is available. This can save you some data traffic charges since you can use the next available WLAN connection instead.
There is also support for attachments and signatures and it seems that Samsung have pretty much thought of everything. And with a screen resolution like this, reading emails is an absolute pleasure.
Here might just be the right time to mention the input options on the Samsung I8910 Omnia HD. The handset offers a standard alphanumeric on-screen keypad in both portrait and landscape mode.
Alphanumeric keypad is here for the traditionalists
Of course the full landscape QWERTY is also onboard to solve all your problems. It has a four-row layout so you need to use the function key for accessing the numbers and symbols, but that’s no biggie.
The large screen makes up for a comfortable virtual QWERTY keyboard
Finally, the Samsung I8910 Omnia HD offers handwriting recognition, which did a rather decent job in recognizing almost all the letters we scribbled in the box. You can improve its performance by taking the handwriting training and showing the handset how you write each different letter.
Handwriting support
Nothing to complain about the file manager
The file manager is yet another aspect where the pedigree counts big time. With the soft keys at the bottom you might almost forget that you are looking at a new device.
The Symbian file management system has been top notch for quite a while now, and it’s difficult to imagine what could be changed about it. The application can basically do anything you can think of with your files – moving, copying renaming, sorting or sending – you name it. You can also password-protect your memory card if you see fit.
The file manager is fully functional
The option to search for a specific file or directory is also available on the phone. All you need to remember is a part of the desired name and where it was located (phone memory, mass memory or memory card) and the Omnia HD will find it in no time.
Dual action galleries
Like with the video player, there are two galleries to choose from as well. The first one is identical to that on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Touch friendly and functional as it may be, we somehow feel more eye-candy could have been offered.
You can scroll pictures by sweeping your finger across the screen when looking at a single photo. Opting between portrait and landscape mode is automatic thanks to the built-in accelerometer. Unless you have that feature disabled, all you need to do to switch modes is to flip the phone sideways.
The primary gallery is accessed straight from the main menu
The second gallery, dubbed the Media browser, is easy to use and works fine. A sweep of your finger scrolls images and videos. The not the t practical tilt-to-scroll feature is enabled here as well and there’s no way of deactivating it.
The media browser is the alternative
Tilt scrolling is fun, to begin with. But then after a while it gets annoying: you have to be careful and not to tilt the handset too much since the angle corresponds to scrolling speed and you might miss an image or two. Still, we’d probably choose this gallery over the Symbian one.
Samsung have taken a very interesting approach with the gallery, which seems to boost the contrast and saturation of the photos when browsed fullscreen. That makes them look amazingly cool on the large AMOLED display. The problem is that those corrections are only applied for the time the image is loaded in its full on the phone screen and the phone applies them to every image as it appears.
The constant application of those corrections causes a certain amount of lag, which has a rather negative impact on usability. On the other hand, this is the only way to get the best of both worlds – the photos look stunning on the display, while at the same time if you download them to a computer they retain more information, giving you more freedom for post-processing. We do know however that there will be many users disappointed that on the desktop computer their photos won’t have the punch they have on the phone screen.
There’s some lagging when opening a photo
Unfortunately we also noticed lag with the gallery thumb initialization every time we opened it. This becomes even more evident when a larger number of photos accumulate on the device. In fact in terms of pure speed and performance this is probably the worst part of the Omnia HD.
Music player rocks
Along with the standard 3.5 mm audio jack, the Omnia HD music features are well complemented by the generous 8 to 16 GB of onboard memory and support for microSDHC cards to potentially double this amount.
As expected, the music player is based on the one we’ve seen in the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The novelty here is the virtual 5.1 channel Dolby Surround, which should help improve the headphone listening experience.
The music player offers two different styles for the Now playing screen
DNSe 2.0 audio enhancement is also on board but does not work simultaneously with Dolby Surround.
Continuing our journey into sound, the 3D visualizations are a nice addition to the music player and the album browser seems to take after Apple’s Cover Flow.
There are also two cool alternative visualizations
Video playback in HD
The Omnia HD features two video players – the well known Symbian-embedded Real player is pretty much rendered useless by the proprietary Samsung video player that supports DivX/XviD video.
The Samsung Video player has a plain but intuitive interface and does a great job. It even supports subtitles which are automatically detected and loaded. You can then further set them up and even manually synchronize them with the video.
There’s subtitles support too
When you tilt the phone the video player automatically switches to/from landscape view. You can adjust the size of the video and how it should fit on the widescreen display if it happens to have a different aspect.
The great 3.7″ display and the widely-spaced stereo speakers make the Samsung Omnia HD a serious competitor for your dedicated portable multimedia player. The excellent battery life will complement that as well.
Knowing you can make your own HD movies with the i8910 is likely to make people wonder how they can watch those on their HD TV sets.
Unfortunately, the Samsung Omnia HD doesn’t have a HDMI port of any kind. That leaves DLNA as the only way you can stream your HD videos on a TV or a PC screen straight from the handset.
To use DLNA with your TV, you have to get yourself a Wi-Fi-enabled TV set with DLNA support or a set-top box that has the same properties and which can channel your wirelessly streamed videos over a cable connection.
If, however, you can put up with lower resolution videos, you can always use the TV-out port on the device itself that’s intended for transferring SD (non-HD) content via the TV-out cable supplied in the retail box.
If you use the cable all HD content that you play on the phone gets scaled down – first off it goes down to the Omnia screen resolution and then that signal gets upscaled to the TV resolution. So you can guess scaling is nothing so impressive in terms of quality. But still, you can watch all your videos fullscreen and it handles superbly the screen auto rotation – the content on the TV screen always has the right landscape orientation.
But getting back to the handset’s video playing capabilities, we have to conclude that they are by far the best we have seen. Easy to upload videos (with no additional application required), a player with a huge number of formats supported, subtitle support and – most importantly – an amazing display make the Omnia HD an unmatched package for watching video.
The HD video playback is a real treat as well though the screen resolution is almost quarter that of a 720p video. Nevertheless we tried playing both XviD and DivX 720p videos on the Omnia HD (AVI container) and they played just fine with no dropped frames whatsoever and they looked way better then the Omnia own video recordings. Unfortunately, the playback of the video container more commonly used for HD content – MKV – is not supported.
Back with one of our pre-release Omnia HD units, we managed to squeeze a good 5 h and 30 min of constant video playback with the screen set at maximum brightness. That’s better than what most laptops offer.
Now that we have a retail unit we are pleased to see that it performs even more impressively managing 5 hours and 50 minutes of continuous playback of standard definition XViD video.
FM radio – simple, easy to use and functional
The FM radio on the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD has a really neat and simple interface and can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. It also has RDS support and automatic scanning for an alternative frequency. This means that if you travel the Omnia HD will take care of auto-switching to the frequencies of your selected radio station.
The FM radio app
There is also room for six shortcuts for your favorite stations on the radio app screen. The handset also supports radio broadcast recording and of course can be minimized to play in the background.
Back in the day Samsung announced that Omnia HD will have a built-in FM transmitter and that created a lot of commotion among users. The feature was not present on our retail unit and it wasn’t present on our pre-release samples as well though Samsung announced it at first. When we went to research that, it turned out that any mentioning of an FM transmitter has also gone missing from Samsung web sites as well.
Decent audio output
The Omnia HD demonstrated passable audio output, getting commendable scores on several of the readings in our traditional audio quality test. We have certainly seen better performers but things aren’t hopeless with the Samsung i8910 either.
The most notable problem with the Omnia HD audio quality is its shaky frequency response and cut-off bass frequencies. The intermodulation distortion is also slightly higher than average.
On the positive side the noise level, the dynamic range and the stereo crosstalk readings are excellent. The total harmonic distortion extremely low value is also commendable achievement. And here go the results so you can see for yourselves.Test Frequency response Noise level Dynamic range THD IMD + Noise Stereo crosstalk
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD +1.29 -2.74 -87.6 86.6 0.0023 0.255 -85.2
HTC Magic +0.21 -2.20 -85.6 88.8 0.025 0.220 -86.0
Samsung S8000 Jet +1.01 -2.03 -87.9 87.0 0.015 0.060 -85.9
HTC Touch HD +0.20, -2.29 -86.7 89.2 0.024 0.253 -86.1
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic +0.09, -0.77 -92.2 92.1 0.013 0.297 -75.0
Nokia N97 +0.04, -0.27 -90.7 90.7 0.0048 0.896 -89.5
LG GC900 Viewty Smart +0.13, -2.20 -92.3 92.4 0.0019 0.120 -91.9
Apple iPhone 3GS +0.01, -0.05 -92.1 92.1 0.0035 0.011 -95.0
Sony Ericsson W995 +0.04, -0.40 -89.1 89.0 0.0033 0.048 -88.7
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD vs Apple iPhone 3GS frequency response graphs
You can learn more about the whole testing process here.
Connectivity all covered
Smartphones are usually well-heeled in terms of connectivity and Samsung i8910 Omnia HD makes no exception. Perfectly prepared, it can handle kinds of data transfer that a user might want it to.
Both USB and Bluetooth are version 2.0 and the latter naturally also sports A2DP. Wi-Fi with UPnP support is also at hand. There is no shortcut key for the Wi-Fi manager, but it can be easily found in the Connectivity menu and connecting to a WLAN network is two taps away. DLNA is also present for sharing digital content to other devices or computers on the local network.
Besides that all kinds of GSM-based network connectivity are at the user disposal – GPRS, EDGE and 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA. The quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE connectivity makes the handset perfectly capable of global roaming.
The Omnia HD has a microSD memory card slot, which can can take up to 16GB cards. The microUSB port is pretty much standard connectivity feature on all recent Samsung handsets, and the 3.5mm audio jack completes the list by also doubling as a TV-out port, as well.
The TV output works well, though not in HD of course. The cable is a regular RCA one and all HD content that you play on the phone gets scaled down – first off it goes down to the Omnia screen resolution and then that signal gets upscaled to the TV resolution. So you can guess scaling is nothing so impressive in terms of quality. But still, you can watch all your videos fullscreen and it handles superbly the screen auto rotation – the content on the TV screen always has the right landscape orientation.
Web browser has Flash video and all the works
The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD web browser is a fully functional application that would have used somewhat more user-friendly interface. The Flash support is cool and so is the kinetic scrolling.
To zoom in and out of a page you drag a small slider in the top right corner. The actual zooming is a bit unresponsive and quite slower than we would have liked it to be. To avoid zooming this way at all is by double-tapping a specific part of the web page. Zooming that way is sometimes a hit and miss thing as the web browser fails to fit the text on screen.
The web browser needs some polishing
There is a Page Overview option, which is a sort of a minimap of the webpage that facilitates navigation.
Going to landscape is automatic • Fullscreen mode
At least the page rendering algorithm is quite good, making all the pages look as if browsed from a desktop computer. The high resolution is also a welcome bonus here, as it allows more content to fit on the screen.
Finally, the web browser has support for both Flash and Java, which means that you can enjoy flash videos straight from your browser without having to use the mobile versions of sites like YouTube or a dedicated client applications.
While certainly capable, the Symbian S60 5th edition web browser could certainly use a bit of fine tuning.
Organizer good to go
The S60 organizer didn’t obviously get too much effort beyond the actual touch optimization. Well, developers were right up to a point but, given the progress of most competitors, some new functionality would have been nice – like copy/paste of events in the calendar or a new calculator.
We have to admit though that the calculator is much more comfortable to operate with fingers than with a D-pad, almost as if it was designed for such use from the very beginning. However it is one of the most basic we have seen, offering a very limited set of functions. Even the Nokia S40 calculator has more features than this one. Luckily, you can find third-party alternatives.
Omnia HD has the simplest of calculators
The calendar has four different view modes – monthly, weekly, daily and to-do, which allows you to check up all your To-Do entries regardless of their date. There are the same four types of events available for setting up as on S60 3rd edition – Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Each event has unique fields of its own, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.
The calendar as we know it from S60 3rd edition
Mobile office is also very well geared, with preinstalled applications able to open Word, Excel and PowerPoint files seamlessly. A PDF viewer is preinstalled, as well.
The document viewer has all formats covered but doesn’t offer editing
Unluckily, editing documents is not supported by the included Quickoffice version. If you would like editing enabled you will have to download the paid upgrade to unlock that functionality.
The organizer package also includes a nice unit converter, voice recorder, as well as the Notes application.
The converter and the voice recorder
The Alarm application allows you to set up as many alarms as you want, each with its own name, trigger day and repeat pattern. If this seems too complicated, there is a quick alarm setup where all you do is set the time and you’re good to go. A World clock is also available.
In addition, the number of alarms is not limited. Thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can also snooze the alarm by simply flipping your phone, much like with the Nokia S60 5th edition handsets.
Setting up an alarm is easy but you don’t get too many options
Finally we come to the useful smart search application, which can look for a specific bit of data through contacts, logs, images, videos, messages etc. You can choose a specific category that you want to search in or search all. This appication is an absolute must if you’ve got a lot of data stored on your phone.
The smart search app can initiate a Google search if you don’t find what you are looking for on the handset
Fine-quality camera
Undoubtedly the 8 megapixel camera is one of the key features of the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD. It delivered promising results when we previewed it a couple of times even if it wasn’t finely tuned yet so we expected it to be among the best we have seen now.
The LED flash might be a disappointment to some but the reason is LED can also be used as a video light. And video is certainly what the phone is really about. We’ll get to it in a little while.
The camera key is comfortable enough to work with and the UI has been altered to provide better touch experience. It is very comfortable with the most frequently used shortcuts only a tap away.
The UI is really comfortable
The range of settings offered by the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is immense: from manual white balance and ISO to exposure compensation, saturation, sharpness and contrast. Various effects are also at hand as well as Face and Smile detection.
The smile shutter is trying to make sure the person you are photographing is going to be smiling on the photo. You just press the shutter and the camera will automatically detect when your subject is smiling and take the shot. We tried it several times and it worked pretty well, although if there are several faces in the frame the camera doesn’t wait for all of them to smile.
Smile shutter is also available
Blink detection is also available but it only alerts you that the person on the photo you just took has blinked. This one certainly is more of a marketing gimmick than anything else. It would have been more useful if the camera delayed taking the shot instead. In other words – it’s better to help you avoid making a crappy photo than yelling at you for doing so.
The geotagging of images is also enabled and this is certainly good news. The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD puts the built-in GPS receiver to use, recording the location of each photo in the EXIF.
You also get the company’s proprietary wide dynamic range (WDR) feature, which decreases contrast thus increasing the dynamic range of the camera. The results are usually photos with much more detail in the shadow areas than one would have gotten otherwise.
Turning the WDR feature on brings more detail in the shadow areas but doesn’t affect the highlights
The image quality the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD produces is pretty much as good as we have seen on a mobile phone. The color rendering is spot-on, contrast and dynamic range are also great. Fine detail is also very good although if anything could be improved – that’s exactly it. In comparison to the Sasmung i8510 INNOV8 one can notice that the INNOV9 delivers more detail in the center of the frame than the Omnia HD. The touchscreen handset however strikes back with better corner sharpness. That difference in the sharpness of the two is probably due to the differences in the lenses used.
The colors of the photos, taken with the INNOV8, are more saturated than those of the Omnia HD. We did mention that when you browse the photos on the Omnia they are automatically boosted to look more appealing but when downloaded to a computer they retain their original “natural” looks and feel. This gives you more options for post processing but if you aren’t into that the results might not look as good as the INNOV8 to you. We guess you can increase the saturation and contrast in camera to achieve similar results – the settings are all there for you to tweak.
Certainly the best part about the Omnia HD camera (and the INNOV8 but we have already discussed that) is there are no major flows of any kind. No traces of oversharpening, no lack of contrast and no excessive noise. Plus, getting the exposure right at all times makes sure most of the photos are keepers.
We have prepared quite a large number of samples for you to enjoy and appreciate the fine quality of the images taken with the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD. For starters here’s the brief shootout that we made between it and the INNOV8.
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD • Samsung i8510 INNOV8 • Samsung i8910 Omnia HD • Samsung i8510 INNOV8
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD • Samsung i8510 INNOV8 • Samsung i8910 Omnia HD • Samsung i8510 INNOV8
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD • Samsung i8510 INNOV8 • Samsung i8910 Omnia HD • Samsung i8510 INNOV8
And there go some more photos from the 8 megapixel camera of the Samsung i8910.
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD camera samples
Since there aren’t virtually no changes in the processing algorithm compared to the last pre-release sample that we previewed you can also check those out as a good reference.
Finally we also give you a bunch of samples that demonstrate what one can achieve with the Samsung Omnia HD and some basic knowledge of image editing. Down-sampled to 1024 x 768 those photos are certainly impressive and can easily rival point-and-shoot camera results in similar conditions.
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD images downsampled to 1024 x 768 pixels
Synthetic resolution
We also snapped our resolution chart with the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD. You can check out what that test is all about here.
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD resolution chart photo • 100% crops
HD videos – a step away from perfection
We already told you that the Omnia HD (as the name suggests) is mostly about video. 720p HD video recording appears for the first time on a GSM handset and the excitement is quite worth it. The promised frame rate is also pretty sweet at 24 fps. Now we are not saying that D1 is not good enough to be usable – it’s just that 720p HD videos are about triple the resolution.
In fact video recording was probably one of the main reasons for Samsung to delay the start of the Omnia HD. The audio codec used in the first produced devices was of incredibly poor quality and it had to be fixed. Now with the final unit we are getting AAC audio, which is just as good as the users hoped.
The camcorder UI
Back in the day the first VGA videos on a mobile phone were a disaster – merely a fat spec rather than a usable feature. So, what’s even more impressive about the Omnia HD is getting the stunning video resolution right the first try.
Unfortunately, now that we have a retail unit, we’re not as impressed with the video quality as we were when we previewed the pre-release version. The Samsung Omnia HD video recording is still miles ahead of the competition but the results in our preview were definitely better. Perhaps the improvement of the audio quality has resulted in lowering of the video quality as a compromise.
The video resolution is no longer stunning as it was and when you add the excessive camera shake, the impression that you’re looking at something taken by a dedicated HD digital camcorder is all gone.
In almost all the cases the framerate was variable and went below the promised 24fps giving the videos somewhat choppy looks. We aren’t talking disastrously many dropped frames but there are about one every second in some videos. You might not even notice that if shooting slower moving objects but more rapid movements looks bad. The Samsung Omnia HD is not really the soccer mom’s dream.
The Omnia camcorder interface is identical to the one of the still camera and allows the user to choose between fixed and auto focus for the video. Effects are also available and a gridline can be applied to the viewfinder for easier framing.
Strangely enough image stabilization isn’t available when shooting video and that is precisely where we would have needed it the most. The camera shake is seriously plaguing most of our samples.
Recording time is not exactly limited, the real limit is imposed on the maximum file size for each recording. In this case videos don’t get any bigger than 2GB. With 720p recording that means 30-40 minutes of footage and we cannot see anyone needing much more.
When you are done recording a video clip, the Omnia HD displays the viewfinder but doesn’t let you start another recording straight away. Instead you have to wait for a while, as the handset saves the video in its memory. Now this is to be expected with such large files but a status indicator would have been nice so you can tell when you are ready to start another recording.
Here go the sample videos we captured with the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD. We have uploaded them to YouTube, so you can check them out straight from your browser. Even when recompressed they still look rather good.
Here are several more camera samples we uploaded at YouTube but that we didn’t embed here.
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4
Here is also an untouched HD video that you can download and enjoy in its full shine – taken straight from the device.
GPS navigation and digital compass are on board as well
The preinstalled navigation software on the Samsung Omnia HD can easily turn the handset in a fully functional SatNav system – especially thanks to the sensitive GPS receiver on board. It comes with the Samsung Mobile Navigator, which is based on the Route66 own mobile application. Though its maps graphics have somewhat outdated looks, feature-wise there’s really nothing missing. It has voice-guided navigation and a huge number of additional features, but the goodies come at an extra cost.
Samsung Navigator has pretty extensive functionality but it all comes for an extra fee
Unfortunately the voice guided navigation as well as the other services such as the weather service, traffic info and safety cameras info, travel guides didn’t come with free license on our unit. We are guessing though that this will be strictly market dependent. Purchased separately, a one-year voice-guided navigation license for a given region costs about 70 euro.
Still if you are unhappy with Samsung Navigator for some reason you can go for some competing application. There are plenty third-party developers waiting to earn some cash by offering navigation software for Symbian S60 5th edition.
Another seemingly cool feature that the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD has is the digital compass. After a relatively quick initialization, it displays a virtual compass on screen. Our disappointment is that it’s far from being really precise even after we calibrated it according to the instructions. On the positive side its integration with the SatNav application is really improving the navigation experience.
The digital compass isn’t too accurate
Gaming on HD
The only game that comes preinstalled on the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is the Asphalt 4 racing simulator. It offers accelerometer based-controls where you tilt the phone for the car to turn, which are responsive enough to provide nice gaming experience.
The Asphalt4 game is quite amusing
And having in mind that this is a Symbian handset, you are by no means limited to that title only. There are plenty of games to download and as more and more S60 5th edition devices make their way to the narket, there will be even more games.
Final words
When first revealed, the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD seemed almost too good to be true. Even the few bumps on its way to the mass market didn’t spoil its appeal. The Omnia HD AMOLED display has neither the biggest screen estate, nor the highest resolution around but it still remains one of the top units in the touchscreen realm. And behind the welcoming gates, immense multimedia power awaits.
Certainly, imaging is the main focus and it can hardly be otherwise when video outdoes the market’s second best by a whopping margin. We are pretty pleased with the camcorder output, especially now that the audio is on the level HD videos deserve. We still believe though the framerate has room for improvement.
But probably the biggest compliment to the video recording is that it leaves a capable 8 megapixel still camera in its shadow, not to mention the other cool extras that simply fade into the background.
Indeed, the Symbian-powered Omnia HD is one of the best equipped handsets we’ve ever had the chance to review. A brief look at the competition should help to see how far ahead it actually is.
If we had to pick one alternative to the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD, we would probably go for the Sony Ericsson Satio (previously known as Idou). It matches most of the features on the Omnia HD, but misses out on two of the most important ones – HD video recording (it’s not that any other handset has that anyway) and the AMOLED screen. It does make up for those with a 12 megapixel shooter, but we still feel an extra-competitive price will be the only way for it to trade blows with the Samsung Omnia HD.
Sony Ericsson Satio
Then of course comes Samsung’s very own Pixon12. However, with no smartphone platform to back it up and much smaller display it’s targeting a different audience really. More fun-to-use than a workhorse device, the Samsung Pixon12 is a welcome substitute for your point-and-shoot on quite a lot of occasions. For cameraphone buffs, the choice between the Pixon12 and Omnia HD could be quite a tough one.
Samsung Pixon12
Another in-house competitor we thought of is the Windows Mobile-powered Omnia II. Samsung were smart enough to make the devices different enough, but this shapes up more like a friendly meeting than a deathmatch. But then, if a large AMOLED screen and all-in-one smartphone capability is your weapon of choice, then it will boil down to WinMo vs. Symbian.
Samsung Omnia II
We cannot help but mention the other handset that boasts the letters HD in its name. What seems an absurd claim in terms of video is quite a well-argued statement about screen resolution. The HTC Touch HD is no match for the Omnia HD when it comes to imaging, but elsewhere it’s a pretty tough call between these heavyweights. And here ends another chapter in the WinMo versus Symbian clash, or as it has now become, TouchFLO against TouchWiz.
HTC Touch HD
Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i8910_omnia_hd-review-380p10.php
Samsung Omnia HD
First impressions are of how tall the Omnia HD is. It’s only 13mm thick and no wider than, for example, the Apple iPhone, but it’s quite long, mainly due to the need to fit in the huge 3.7″ capacitive, AMOLED touchscreen. So the Omnia HD has just about the biggest screen of any phone in the world, using the ‘best’ touch technology, with the brightest display system. It all adds up to something of a stunning experience. I thought the screens on my Nokia 5800 and Apple iPod Touch were pretty stunning (indoors), but both were outshone for colour and contrast by the OLED technology in the Omnia HD:
Omnia HD vs Nokia 5800
iPod Touch (same form factor/tech as iPhone) vs Omnia HD
Having used the resistive-screened Nokia 5800 extensively, I was keen to try the capacitive-screened Omnia HD. As with the iPhone, the use of capacitive sensing means instant response to a screen touch – there’s no need to press down. Capacitive screens also mean a tough outer glass front and, with the bright OLED display underneath, and the use of a OMAP3 processor (with graphics acceleration), makes for an utterly superb user experience. You touch the screen, something happens. Immediately. Admittedly the Omnia is going to cost twice the price of the Nokia 5800, but at least you can see where the money’s going.
I was particularly interested in typing on the full-screen qwerty keyboard. With the better touch response and with (physically) greater area per virtual key, I was expecting this to work really well. Which is why both Rafe and I were utterly bamboozled by the fact that our first attempts to type on the qwerty on-screen keyboard resulted in gibberish.
The problem is that, like the Nokia 5800’s resistive screen, there’s no multi-touch, so you have to completely lift off one ‘key’ before starting to tap the next one. Try to go too fast and there will be tiny overlaps and the capacitive screen then has two inputs to process and gets the result spectacularly wrong. With the 5800 there’s a margin of error in that you can start lifting off one ‘key’ while starting to tap the next and the worst that happens is that you might miss a letter. On the Omnia HD, get even the smallest overlap in timing and you generate bogus characters every time. By the end of our day with the Omnia HD, I was starting to adjust and my last attempts at typing were a lot more successful. But this still won’t stop me pleading with the programmers at Nokia and Samsung to pull their finger out and implement drivers for multi-touch (pseudo-multi-touch in the 5800’s case – Nokia can email me for the concepts and algorithms!) so that typing on a touch screen becomes fast enough to be a viable alternative to a real keyboard.
The TouchWiz home screen was something that Rafe was particularly keen to try and I think it’s fair to say that both of us were moderately impressed with the slickness of it, although many of the ‘widgets’ were sadly nothing more than shortcuts to web sites, while many others were somewhat trivial in function. Still, being able to completely customise up to three separate home screens was rather nice and I especially liked the way you can swipe from right to left to bring up the standard S60 menus (as an alternative to pressing the middle hardware key). Rafe will be going into TouchWiz in a lot more detail in a future part in this series.
The next main attraction was the camera, of course. 8 Megapixels and 720p (HD) video recording. The first thing to notice is that there’s no lens cover or shutter, a bit of a disappointment. It’s recessed far enough not to be in danger of scratches, but it’s still going to collect dust like it’s going out of fashion. A backwards step. The 8 megapixel stills sensor seems to be similar to that in the excellent INNOV8 – results in my test photos weren’t quite as good, but then the firmware and camera algorithms aren’t finalised yet and this is sure to be an area that gets tweaked. Here’s an example photo, taken on the Omnia HD, click for the full 8 megapixel image:
Night-time flash is via single LED, but the low light responsiveness of the phone’s camera sensor does mean that you’ll only need to resort to flash when it’s really quite dark. Still, you’d have thought a Xenon flash would have made sense in a unit this well specified?
Video capture can be at a variety of resolutions:
720p (1280 by 720 pixels)
720 by 480 (the 16:9 widescreen version of VGA)
640 by 480 (VGA)
320 by 240 (QVGA)
Having experienced several Nokia Nseries phones which clearly had trouble managing to encode video at full frame rate at VGA (naming no names, but the N79 and N85 should look away now as likely candidates…), plus bearing in mind the issues I’ve had with Samsung’s previous device, the INNOV8, which to this day can’t keep captured video in sync with the audio track, I was slightly sceptical about whether the Omnia HD could cope with capturing, encoding and saving video at 720p HD resolutions.
I was right to be sceptical, though again we should emphasise that the firmware here is very much a work in progress. On the positive side, the Omnia HD managed to capture video at 720 by 480 without introducing any audio/video sync problems, so we’ve clearly moved on from the INNOV8. The initial focus in video mode was still there and very welcome, but the quality of the captured audio wasn’t brilliant – I suspect this is down to Samsung using cheaper microphones than Nokia in this department. When we tried to record at full 720p, there was a huge lag in the audio track – this is an area where Samsung are going to have to pull out all the stops before release if the device’s headline feature isn’t to become a laughing stock.
So that you can see the output from the Omnia HD for yourself, here are two MP4 files from its camera. Again, bear in mind that this is preproduction firmware:
720by480.mp4 (wide VGA, 12MB) and 720p.mp4 (HD, 720p, 23MB)
__________
Working our way around the Omnia HD’s interface, a lot of it was quite familiar from the Nokia 5800, although there are numerous tweaks that Samsung have added and which Rafe will be sharing in text and video form over the next few weeks. One of the most interesting tweaks we found (and shown above) was in Web, where tapping and holding brings up a zoom control – swipe up or down and you dynamically change the current page’s zoom level. Pretty cool.
I experimented with video playback on the Omnia HD (I’d brought along a selection of media files) and it played everything I threw at it without complaining. The sound output was especially welcome, the Omnia’s speakers (on each end of the device, shown below) are almost as loud as those on the Nokia N95 and 5800. Sound quality for music playback was especially good, with Samsung’s DNSe 2.0 system providing some pretty advanced equalisation and enhancement functions – Rafe gave this a big thumbs up, listening on his Ultimate Ears headset.
On the technical side, I noted that the Omnia HD had a whopping, humungous 163MB of RAM free after booting. Whether this remains this high for production models remains to be seen. There was also 8GB of flash memory in a built-in mass storage disk (with a 16GB option in production), plus microSD, of course.
The specifications of the Omnia HD are somewhat overwhelming. When I first tried the INNOV8, early in 2008, I remember remarking how this had everything that could possibly be put into a phone. And here we are a year later with massive high brightness screen, capacitive touch, digital compass, FM transmittter, HSUPA, DNSe 2.0 and more, all over and above what the INNOV8 offered.
Holding the Omnia HD in the hand, it’s large enough that you think of it very much in the vein of the iPhone (or the upcoming Nokia N97), i.e. it screams “I’m not just a phone”, whereas the Nokia 5800 perhaps merely raises its voice to suggest the same. It has similar problems to the 5800 in that the screen is unreadable in full-on, direct sunlight, in that it attracts fingerprints, and in that there’s no multi-touch (yet) to speed text input. And Samsung have, of course, got the traditional challenge from me to follow up some ground-breaking hardware with bug-free, mature software and services. The INNOV8 was perhaps a little too early in their software and services ‘curve’ and suffered at reviewers’ hands as a result. Maybe the Omnia HD is the right product at the right time?
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