Camera Phones Plaza

Samsung has already created a brand image and they pass the stage of making only cheap phones. They tried to enter the smartphones market gradually, and with i900 Omnia they really made it. A great phone with almost all functions that you could ever want from a phone, is has more than reasonable sizes and it looks good.

The box looks good and it contains everything you need for such a phone. A charger, a USB cable, the headphones, a software CD, some manuals and the stylus. I was surprised to see the stylus because the phone does not have a special slot in which it can be stored.

Samsung i900 Omnia is a little big. Especially, the 122 grams weight might scare some people. It is very OK to use and to handle. Even if it is slightly wider and taller than other smartphones, is simultaneously very thin. Therefore, it is elegant. And it fits in your pocket. The material quality is very good. The case, that appears to be metal, is actually plastic. This plastic made me a positive impression. Samsung i900 Omnia has keys to answer and reject calls, optical sensor for the mouse cursor and the side button on / off, main menu key, camera button and volume keys. On the back is 5 megapixels camera. Samsung have made some effort to make the Omnia i900 phone easy to use. The touchpad that can replace the stylus is very smart, unfortunately I had to use the stylus when I needed to write a text that is more precise.

The interface is the usual Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. Samsung have made a special menu over the operating system that starts when you press the main menu button. It is easier to control with your finger over the normal menus in Windows Mobile. It cannot compare with the HTC TouchFLO 3D system and their super cool menu.

I know that you can hardly wait to find out how is the screen. Well, this is the weak spot of Samsung i900 Omnia. It is not a bad screen, do not get me wrong, but it is not up to the other facilities of the phone. Why say it is weak? First, it has a non-standard resolution, 240 x 400 pixels. You may experience problems in some applications designed for 240 x 320. Second, with the 3.2 inch size, he could have had a better resolution. To think that HTC Touch Diamond is only 2.8 inch and that it has a resolution of 480 x 640. And third, there are problems in strong light. It read hard, very hard. Maybe it seems overly critical, but I said why. In a phone this powerful, you expect to have a very good screen.

Omnia i900 is designed for multimedia. And we can see this; Samsung has worked on the applications that play files, music and movies to be more touch-friendly. i900 excels in each of these issues. Let us take them one at a time.

The multimedia file browser is the same one for images, music and movies. It is a good thing, with one program you can look for something very easy. The images look good on the big screen. Samsung came up with some ideas for handling the images that remind me of the iPhone. For example, in order to zoom in / zoom out, a finger movement (up or down) is enough. The phone has and accelerometer, so it will go to landscape mode automatically when you turn the phone in horizontal position.

The music player is also very good; it automatically organizes audio files by the artist, album, genre. I liked the sound quality; it is a bit beyond what current phones offer, even the multimedia phones. i900 Omnia does not have a 3.5 mm audio jack directly on it, but it has a headphone adapter. Therefore, you can change without problems the original headphones with some better headphones, if you use them together with the adapter.

Like any other multimedia phone, Samsung i900 Omnia has FM radio. It works only with the headphones plugged in, which serve as the antenna. It is a good radio, it has an easy to use interface and is adapted to use with your finger. You do not need the cursor or the stylus.

Well, let us take a look at the camera. From a 5 megapixel camera I had many expectations. And I was not wrong, it is excellent. Pictures are comparable with those made with a Nokia N95, which has one of the best cameras.

But let us get back to the camera on the i900 Omnia. The pictures are great for a phone, both in natural light, and in darker environments. Obviously in the natural light the pictures come out much better, this happens with ordinary cameras too. If we do not have enough light, the phone uses a LED flash.

For recording movies, the phone is average. It can record at 320 x 240 pixels and 30 fps or 640 x 480 and 15 fps. There is no more, no less, if you want to put short films on YouTube.

On the connectivity, i900 Omnia is included in what should a smartphone offer: GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA, WiFi. All these technologies allow you to connect to the Internet through your mobile operator network or through a hotspot, with a speed higher or lower.

Web browsing is a pleasure thanks to the big screen. Landscape mode is the most appropriate here. The phone has two browsers installed, Internet Explorer and Opera Mobile 9.5. As usual, Opera beats its competition at the speed and the quality of rendering pages, and even the ease of use. Samsung have implemented even their own zoom in / zoom out system with your finger from the pictures, in Opera, so you can zoom in or shrink a page by moving your finger up or down. The only problem is that Flash player is rather old. It has Flash Lite 2.1, and the latest version is 3. Most Flash animations from web pages work only with version 3. The phone does not have an infrared port, but it supports Bluetooth instead.

Like any Windows Mobile phone, i900 Omnia has both a good organizer, and mobile office applications. The calendar is similar to Outlook. You can easily define both the meeting type events, and to-dos. It can synchronize with Outlook on your PC very easily. The Mobile Office Suite is preinstalled, and it consists of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. I tested some files, I could easily edit and then I sent the email without problems.

The phone has a lot of useful applications preinstalled. RSS Reader, Podcast Manager, Video Editor and some applications from Google (search, email, maps). You can install many other applications, developers have been hardworking and Windows Mobile is a platform with more available software, including games.

Samsung i900 Omnia has GPS too. It does not come with a preinstalled navigation software, but it has Google Maps. If you are a pedestrian or you just rarely need GPS, Google Maps is OK. You would probably have to install your software for GPS navigation. Such programs usually come on memory cards, already installed.

Samsung i900 Omnia is certainly one of the best smartphones on the market. Samsung come with several innovative features or rarely seen in a smartphone, such as the cursor movement using the touchpad, the camera quality and the powerful processor. It is almost complete in terms of functionality and can be used with the same pleasure by a multimedia passionate and even a businessman.