23 Aug 2008Measuring a slim 112 x 56.9 x 12.5 millimetres and weighing 127 grams, the Samsung Omnia is a sleek touchphone with an attractive platinum finish, accented by detailed pattern designs.
The Samsung Omnia is dominated by its 81.28-millimetre TFT display screen that runs on a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels and supports 65,000 colours. Its wide user interface display operates on TouchWiz system, and is supported by haptical technology. The responsiveness of the mobile phone's TouchWiz technology is boosted by its Marvell PXA312 processor.
Being TouchWiz-enabled, the Samsung Omnia's display screen does not have a slot for a stylus. Also, it houses a number of keys, such as the optical joystick, and has a few buttons for camera, End, Call and Menu functions. The Samsung Omnia's optical joystick has the ability to function either as an ordinary touchpad or as a mouse pointer to allow users to virtually navigate. Additionally, the Omnia's display screen is powered by the Accelerometer; hence, when the mobile phone is tilted sideways, the display automatically rotates. The display screen also comes with animated transitions.
Interestingly, the Samsung Omnia has business features that essentially operate on Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1. Accordingly, users of the Samsung Omnia will be able to access and use Windows-based applications such as PowerPoint, Excel or Word right on the mobile phone.
As part of its advanced multimedia features, the Samsung Omnia sports a built-in 5-megapixel digital camera, which is said to be the first of its kind for Windows-based mobile smartphones. It comes with advanced settings such as white balance, self-timer, ISO settings, colour effect and a variety of modes including such as face detection, an LED flash, auto focus, smile detection and image stabiliser for near-flawless photo outputs. The Omnia's camera supports a resolution of up to 2592 x 1944 pixels.
The Samsung Omnia's camera creates fairly natural and crisp images because of its colour reproduction which is quite accurate. The built-in camera also allows recording of VGA videos, on a 640 x 480 resolution at 15fps, as well as QVGA videos with a resolution of 320 x 240, and at 30fps. Besides video recording, the Samsung Omnia camera allows video playback and streaming, which support customary video file formats such as AAC, DivX, Xvid and MP4.
For users who dig their favourite music, the Samsung Omnia houses its own FM radio that comes with RDS. Listening to the radio is easy and convenient with the mobile phone's 3.5-millimetre audio jack.
The Samsung Omnia also offers high-speed Internet access with its Wi-Fi feature, allowing speedier online data transfers at the maximum rate of 7.2 Mbps. Being a smartphone that runs on HSDPA, the Samsung Omnia also allows on-device advanced online browsing.
As a quadband mobile phone, the Samsung Omnia supports varied connectivity options such as EDGE Class 12, GPRS Class 12, USB version 2.0, WLAN 802.11 and 3G HSDPA at 7.2 Mbps. As added features, the Samsung Omnia comes with a GPS Receiver with the A-GPS system, handwriting recognition and supports Bluetooth A2DP version 2.0.
The Samsung Omnia allows its users to store massive 8 or 16 Gigabytes of data files, photos, videos or mobile, depending upon the version of the mobile phone. As a Windows-based handset, the Samsung Omnia is of 128-Megabyte RAM and 256-Megabyte ROM.
The Samsung Omnia runs on Li-ion battery of 1440 mAh. At most, it is able to provide approximately 6 hours of talk time, and can last for 3 days when moderately used.
Despite the full functionalities that the Samsung Omnia offers, some observers point out that the mobile phone may be too clunky. As a flagship mobile phone, the Samsung Omnia may be less graphically attractive as compared with its direct competitor, the Apple iPhone, they say.
While the Samsung Omnia is powerful with its wide touchscreen display, some users say they would have preferred the mobile phone on the traditional QWERTY type of keyboard. Some users have also complained that the Samsung Omnia offers poor readability when under direct sunlight.
Nevertheless, with advanced features and capabilities, satisfied users believe that the Samsung Omnia can compete with top-of-the-line smartphones and the Apple iPhone that are selling like hotcakes among modernist users.
Editor CommentsEditor: Andrew on 28th October, 2008
I have the great pleasure of riding the London Underground most days, and the trains are just covered with ads for the Samsung Omnia. There are also quite a few ads around the central London stations. Samsung have gone all out on this, and it's a bit hard to understand why you don't see more people using the Omnia. What's even harder to understand is why the Samsung Tocco is still more popular - but cost is likely to have something to do with that.
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