Samsung Omnia 2 Media Playback
The Samsung Omnia 2 is the most recent addition to the Omnia range of touch screen smart phones and like the best of the breed it aims to offer entertainment and communication all packaged in a way that should feel intuitive and cutting edge. Since Windows Mobile 6.5 is the operating system powering this phone, the Samsung Omnia 2 media playback functions are amongst its strongest features, especially if you have a Windows-based PC or laptop. And in a Microsoft dominated world, who amongst us does not have such a computer in their home?
Because the Omnia 2 is inherently compatible with the Windows platform there is no need to fiddle around with proprietary media playing software as you would with most other phones. If you have Windows Media Player on your PC and you have your entire music collection stored and ordered then synchronising with Media Player on the Omnia 2 is incredibly easy. You can transfer over all the tracks you want, as well as being able to manage your own customised playlists and various other useful functions, all of which makes music playback extremely easy to use despite the slightly clunky look of the mobile version of Media Player.
Video playback is just as easy and because Windows is the platform of choice for all things multimedia, the Samsung Omnia 2 media playback benefits from compatibility with the widest range of audio and video files of any smartphone on the market today. It can handle mp3s and WAV files as you might expect, but it is also ready to deal with DivX, WMV and H.264 video formats, all of which offer the best quality playback possible. Since most people will have TV shows and movies stored in these formats on their PCs it will be easy to transfer them to the Omnia 2 without the need for encoding or quality loss.
Another great benefit to the Samsung Omnia 2 media playback is the screen. Samsung has used an AMOLED touch sensitive display that is the undisputed king when it comes to brightness, colour and energy efficiency. AMOLED is a relatively young technology that will eventually be seen on larger displays, but for now is only available in this smaller form for Samsung smartphones. Not only is the 3.7 inch screen larger than most other mobile displays, but it also has a high native resolution to ensure that all of the video that is displayed on it appears crisp.
If you want to enjoy other types of media that you have not transferred to the phone yourself, you can use the Omnia 2’s high speed mobile internet connection via 3G or Wi-Fi to stream video from the internet. Media playback from YouTube is possible, although of course the speed and quality of the video will depend on the speed and quality of the connection rather than the Omnia 2 itself.
The one issue with the Samsung Omnia 2 media playback is that at times it can be a little sluggish to start up. This is an issue with the phone as a whole, with other elements such as the camera function occasionally taking a long time to load up for the first time. Whilst this is only an intermittent problem, it is a pity that Samsung has not been able to squeeze a bit more performance from the 800Mhz processor that powers the Omnia 2. On the other hand it does its best in working around the sometimes restrictive Windows Mobile platform and the Samsung Omnia 2 media playback and indeed from every other software and hardware feature of the phone is otherwise optimised.
Tags: samsung, samsung omnia 2