A Symbian-injected followup to the so-so Windows Mobile Omnia, the HD i8910 is a specced-out slab of phone from Samsung, with a 3.7-inch AMOLED screen, 8MP camera, HD video recording and a definite thing for multimedia.

The Price: TBD, at least as far as subsidized carrier deals go. You can grab it unlocked now for about $650, but 3G may not work on your carrier.

The Verdict: The Omnia HD does everything fine, and a few things extremely well. Video playback is top notch and widely compatible, the camera is among the best I’ve ever seen on a cellphone, and the video recording can actually hang with a lot of pocket cams, like the Flip or Kodak Zi series. On all other counts the phone never falls flat, but it never really shines, either.

The Hardware: Your first impression of the Omnia HD is that it’s big, but that’s not really fair: It’s a tall device, but it’s not meaningfully larger than any of the other popular touchscreen phones on the market today—it’s just proportioned differently (see the gallery below for comparison). And for all the hardware crammed inside, it’s reasonably thin. Speaking of guts: It’s got HSDPA (on European bands), GPS, 8-16GB of internal storage with microSD expansion, and 8MP, 720p-recording camera sensor, a built-in flash bulb, a forward-facing video camera, USB connector and a 3.5mm jack. The lack of HDMI-out is semi-replaced by DLNA network streaming, though it’s not really an even trade. At any rate, it’s a healthy phone, hardware-wise.

Samsung touts the AMOLED screen over pretty much everything else, and with some good reason. It’s vibrant and sharp, but side by side with an iPod Touch, it isn’t strikingly better. The benefits of the OLED, such as they are, seem to manifest themselves more in the phone’s long-ish battery life than anything else. In terms of touch, it’s a capacitive panel, and it’s extremely responsive. Any lag or difficulties with touch controls or soft keyboard are entirely down to the software.

Cellphone cameras are generally horrible, so the Omnia HD’s camera is a rare treat. Seriously: I even trusted it to shoot a headphone review last week, and it came through impressively well. It’ll match a low-end point-and-shoot in most situations, barring low-light—the sensor can’t really handle darker situations too well, and the flash is pretty wimpy—and fast-motion scenes. Video, on the other hand, is at least pocket-cam quality. In daylight it’s razor-sharp at 720p, while in low light it’s passable. Novel-but-not-terribly-useful slo-mo and high-speed modes are thrown in for good measure. The Omnia HD doesn’t quite match up to the best-of-the-bunch Kodak Zi8, for example, but it’s amazingly close, especially for a phone. A phone, with a decent camera! How did this happen?

The Software: This is where things fall apart a little. Wherever the Omnia HD’s hardware shines—along with the kickass camera, it can handle HD video playback in plenty of codecs—the software is fine. The camera interface and media playback interfaces, music and video, are never distracting and usually do what you expect. Everything else? That’s a different story.

Samsung’s thrown the old Omnia’s TouchWiz widget UI, originally designed for Windows Mobile, onto the Symbian-powered HD. This in itself is fine, since TouchWiz has always been a decent, finger-friendly homescreen, wherever it shows up. Outside of the three main TouchWiz panels, though, is a bizarre UI stew, some from Symbian, some from Samsung, and some from the deepest bowels of design hell. For example: Scrolling! Instead of throwing menus and selecting entries, the selection follows your finger. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a terrible way to have to trudge around a menu-heavy operating system. The onscreen keyboard seems to be a Samsung special too. It’s fine—it’s spacious and rarely lags—but it’s set on a perfect grid, doesn’t come with any autocorrect and generally feels like it was designed in about an hour.

Outside of the core multimedia and homescreen areas, the phone is a fairly raw take on Symbian’s S60 5th Edition shell, which means the UI is inconsistent and difficult to tackle with fingers. Not to mention S60′s needlessly inserted extra steps all over the place. Want to enter a URL? Press a button, type your address, press another button, and press another. It doesn’t make any sense. Samsung’s given Symbian something of a makeover, but most of Matt’s complaints about the N97 software carry over to the HD. Everything—even basic calling, contact management and OS navigation—is overcomplicated and disorganized, beyond the point of a “learning curve.”

Functionally, though, it holds up fine: The browser could be easier to navigate with, but renders with WebKit, supports Flash and generally does its job. Same goes for pretty much everything else: The experience could be smoother, but you’d be hard pressed to find a task that the HD explicitly can’t handle. And if you do find a gap, remember that this is full Symbian, so you can always go app hunting. As dumb as the UI can be, don’t be fooled into thinking this is a dumbphone: It can do pretty much anything an Android or Windows Mobile phone can, and sometimes even more—it’s just that sometimes, it’s painfully awkward.

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The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ is a 3G capable handset complete with a stunning touch screen & a beautifully designed casing. The handset has a stylish curved shape casing which gives the casing a modern look as well as being an ideal shape for the user to use. Some of you might call it a DJ as it is a music focused handset which comes with high quality music features to entertain all music loving mobile phone users when the user is out & about.

The inspired and unmistakable styling, vibrant OLED capacitive touchscreen, sweet clicking TouchWiz and a whole new music experience will make you have a crush or wish you were younger.
The music playing feature is the main feature of this stunning touch screen phone which provides clear sounding music playback complete with easy to use music features to make it a perfect music experience for the user on the move. The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ turns into a portable music playing devices & a stylish entertainment as well as communication devices. The user can enjoy a Beat DJ music application & enjoy playing music in popular music formats such as MP3 format on their built in music player. The user can use the touch screen to control their music features & music selections.
This first DJ phone in the world comes with a integrated stereo sound speakers for a beautifully clear listening experience & the user can adjust the amplifier & volume controls to hear their music entertainment just the way the users wants to. The handset comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack port which allows the user to insert a set of compatible headphones to enjoy a more private listening experience. A built in radio feature allows the user to tune into the radio whilst on the move to catch up on their favorite stations & new music. The user can hear their favorite tracks out loud each time a new call comes in or a message is delivered into the inbox as the Samsung M7600 Beat DJ supports MP3 format, WAV & polyphonic format ringing tones.
The M7600 Beat DJ also comes with a good sized screen which is a touch screen complete with a high colour display & high resolution screen. This touch screen allows the user to make on screen selections & control their phones features with simple touch activated controls.
The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ is a solid weight phone which weight 99.7 grams including the fitted battery & the overall size of its curvaceous casing measures 13.9mm in depth by 51mm wide by 112mm tall.
Its key features are the following:
- Stand-out design
- Quad-band GSM and 3G with HSDPA support
- 2.8″ 16M-color AMOLED touchscreen display of WQVGA resolution
- 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and VGA video at 15 fps
- Accelerometer for screen auto rotate
- Proximity sensor for auto screen turn-off
- MicroSD card slot (up to 16 GB), 8 GB card included
- Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support, Google Maps
- Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
- DivX/XviD video support
- Stereo FM radio with RDS, FM recording
- Standard 3.5mm audio jack
- Office document viewer
- Smart dialing
- BeatDJ app for scratching and sampling

The DJ phone supports 3G HSDPA technology which allow the user of this curvaceous phone to enjoy high speed Internet connectivity & 3G network coverage. The handset works on a GSM & 3G HSDPA networks which cover GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, HSDPA 900 & HSDPA 2100. The user can enjoy worldwide network coverage on their handset meaning the user can travel around the world using their handset but the network coverage does depend on the user’s network service provider.
The M7600 Beat DJ also supports EDGE technology & GPRS which provides fast data transfer speeds for the user to enjoy when transferring files between this phone & other devices.
The new mobile phone has an internal memory which is fifty megabytes in size & the user can extend the phones memory capabilities further by adding a memory card in the size to suit the user’s memory requirements. The phone supports MicroSD™ type memory cards & the handset can support up to sixteen gigabytes of external memory via the memory card slot.
A built in A GPS navigation function allows the user to enjoy a picture geo tagging feature when using the built in camera & the user can find out exactly where they are currently located & where they need to go to but using the A GPS navigation feature.
The user can connect their phone to other devices using either a cabled connection or a Bluetooth® wireless connection. The user can select the connectivity option which best suits the user’s needs & the connectivity which is compatible with their chosen devices whether it be a printer, PC, laptop or another mobile phone handset.
This amazing cell phone also comes equipped with an integrated three megapixel camera, video recording at up to fifteen frames per second, automatic focus, red eye reduction option, a built in Web browser, messaging services which include a multimedia picture & video messaging service, a text messaging service as well as a built in mobile email service.

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The handset is more similar in design to the HTC Magic, rather than the T-Mobile G1, in that it features a candy bar-style form factor and doesn’t include a physical keyboard. The Samsung I7500 measures 4.5 inches tall by 2.2 inches wide by 0.4 inch thick (a slim 11.9mm waistline).
Samsung I7500 is a cutting-edge smartphone, equipped with a 3.2-inch 320 x 480 pixel AMOLED screen of HVGA resolution. The device runs on the latest 1.5 version of the Andorid OS and is equipped with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera, 1,500mAh battery, 8GB of internal memory, and microSD expansion slot (supports up to 32GB). The phone also offers all the connectivity features one might expect in a 2009 flagship phone: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Of course, as an Android device, the I7500 supports Google’s various services, such as Google Search, YouTube, Google Talk, Gmail, Google Calendar and more. The integrated GPS receiver enables the comprehensive use of Google Maps features, such as My Location, Google Latitude, Street View, and detailed route description. Hundreds of other applications are available in Android Market. For example, the application Wikitude, a mobile travel guide, allows consumers to access details of unknown sights via location-based Wikipedia articles.
The Samsung i7500 will become available in the major European countries from June. Unfortunately, plans for a U.S. release are still unclear. There is, however, potentially good news for those in the States. The Samsung I7500 is a tri-band HSDPA and HSUPA device, supporting the 900/1700/2100MHz bands, which makes it compatible with the T-Mobile’s 3G network.
The price isn’t yet officially announced. Rumor has it that it will be in the region of 300 euro before taxes and subsides.
In other Android news, it looks like G1 owners in Germany will be the first to get the Android 1.5 software update. And, according to the info posted on androidguys.com, the update will be available in May, bringing such enhancements as video recording, stereo Bluetooth, an onscreen keyboard, and more.

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There haven’t been many Windows Mobile devices from Samsung. Their first ones were the forgettable Samsung Jack and Ace. Now we have the Omnia i910.

Will it make more of an impression than the Jack and Ace? Read on!

The Omnia i910 testing is on the Telus network. It’s a Windows Mobile Professional CDMA phone with Bluetooth Wifi, 8GB of built in memory, SDHC card slot, optical mouse and a 5 megapixel auto focus camera.

The front has talk/end buttons plus an optical mouse which you can press in to select. To use the optical mouse you have to turn the mouse pointer on. Then you can move it by sliding your finger on it – it’s like a tiny trackpad. If you don’t care for the pointer you can turn it off at which point the optical mouse acts like a navpad. You use it by sliding your finger in the direction you want to move.

While the optical mouse is a neat feature I didn’t find it adds much from a usability standpoint.

The display has adequate brightness. It has a resolution of 240×400 which is taller than average.

There is an orientation sensor which works most of the time. There’s an animation (which you can turn off) whenever the screen layout changes

There is no where to store the stylus in the Omnia, instead you attach it to the eyelit. This arrangement is less than ideal because a) the stylus is constantly hitting and rubbing the Omnia when you carry it around b) the stylus often gets in the way of using it, especially if you’re holding the Omnia to your ear. Indeed after using the Omnia for 2 weeks I can see some small scratches on the send/end buttons as well as on the back of the screen. So it’s something to think about if you don’t like scratches.

Whenever you touch the screen the Omnia vibrates (Haptic feedback). At first I found the delay from when you touch the screen to when it vibrates to be too long but after a while I got used to it and found it’s actually a nice feature.

Now the Omnia has 2 different types of memory; 8GB of built in storage and the SDHC card slot. If you want the Omnia USB to connect in mass storage mode you can only access the built in storage OR the SDHC. You can’t access them simultaneously unless you connect in Activesync mode.

I found the Omnia kept disconnecting from my computer when it Active sync mode. This made it tough to test the speed. That said the mass storage mode is much faster (3 or 4x) at transferring files. I observed speeds of 4.5MB/s read, 2.5MB/s write for the built in storage and 6.5MB/s read, 2.5MB/s write with the memory card. The memory card was a regular 16GB Sandisk SDHC card.

The speaker on the back isn’t very loud. I let my wife borrow the Omnia when we were at the mall. She never answered any of my calls because she couldn’t hear the phone ringing.

While there is no headphone jack on the Omnia there is one on the microphone so you can use it like a headset. There’s also a dongle which lets you connect a pair of headphones plus it has a pass through so you can connect a Samsung to USB cable.

There are 7 different ways to enter text. Besides the usual, Block Recognizer, Keyboard, Letter Recognizer and transcriber you also get Samsung Keyboard (a QWERTY keyboard), Samsung Keypad (sure type) and Samsung Phonepad.

When using the Samsung Keyboard the space button is off to the right. So if you’re not used to it you’ll find yourself hiding the keyboard a lot because of how Windows Mobile is laid out.

Menus:

You can bring up the menu by pressing the menu button on the right side. It’s not the usual WM menu – that is brought up by pressing the start button. Instead is a menu which has a decidedly Samsung-ish look to it. You can move between screens of buttons by sliding the screen up or down as well as sideways. This menu only has some programs, if you want to access all of them there’s another list that has everything on it. This list is pretty long and not very user friendly.

Instead of the today screen Samsung has a display which you can customize using widgets.

Here’s a list of included widgets: Analog Clock, Digital Clock, World Clock (digital clock with 2 times on it), Game, Calendar, Photo, Music Player, FM radio, Phonebook, Messages, Profile, Web Browser, Note, Wireless Manager, Operator, Help, Sports, Youtube, Window Live, Sharepix, AccuWeather, Yahoo Finacne, Google, YahooSearch plus a links to Telus’ webpage.

Yup, there are a lot of widgets. To narrow down the list you can select which Widgets you want to show up as icons on the left side of the screen. Of those you can tap and drag them to the right so that you can see them.

The widgets work well but they also really clutter up the standby screen. I also found they would slow down the Omnia if you have a couple of programs. What happens is the Omnia will sometimes close the widgets so you have to wait for them to start up again if you return to the standby.

Personally, I prefer the widgets over the regular standby screen.

Besides the usual WM stuff Samsung has some neat extras: Touch Player, Opera, Photo Slide, Media Album, Smart Reader, Digital Frame, TV Out, Podcasts, Smart Converter, Smart Memo, Video Editor and The Sims 2 (the video game).

Samsung has given a pretty good shot of prettying up or covering up a lot of the default built in Windows Mobile apps. Of course if you prefer the built in apps they’re still around.

The phone app is from Samsung. The screen can be pretty sensetive at times so the Omnia makes you press the optical mouse in before you can touch the screen during a call. Like most smartphones the phonebook lets you search your phonebook, recent call list by entering part of a name or number.

Touch Player handles music and video duties. With the exception of widget from the standby screen you can’t really control music playback unless you have the app active.

There’s an FM radio. I didn’t try it.

Opera is a html web browser which renders pages closer to how they’d look on a computer. You can scroll through pages by sliding your finger/stylus around – there are no scroll bars. Compared with higher resolution WinMo devices (like an HTC Touch Diamond) The Omnia’s screen resolution feels too low for Opera. Most of the time you have to scroll in so text is a bit larger. Opera supports tabbed browsing.

You can zoom by double tapping the screen or by sliding the side of the screen up or down. When you zoom the text automatically reformats to fit the width of the screen.

The clock application actually has a few nice tricks. Besides having an alarm it also has a World clock plus stop watch features – nice.

Smart Reader is pretty cool, basically it’s an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program; you take a picture of a business card and it automatically places the contents into your phonebook. I found it’s accuracy varies a lot depending on the business card. Obviously plain looking business cards will be recognized more accurately while complicated ones will be less so. Regardless, double check before you save!

Digital Frame, is a picture frame app. It’s a cute app that would be more useful if the Omnia shipped with a docking station of some kind or had a built in stand. I had a hard time seeing the screen when the phone is just lying on my desk because the viewing angle isn’t wide enough.

Since the Omnia has a very decent camera the TV Out is some what useful. It’s also useful if you do a lot of Powerpoint and aren’t strong enough to lift a laptop (or are too poor to own one).

If you want to view pictures or video stored on the Omnia on a TV and don’t want to fiddle around with memory cards you can view them provided you have a DLNA compliant TV. I don’t have DLNA TV but I watched a demo where it worked with a Samsung TV from the 2007 (I think) model year.

You can launch the camera application by pressing the camera button on the right side. The volume buttons serve as zoom controls in this mode. The camera can sometimes take a few seconds to launch but the controls are pretty responsive after.

The camera has a resolution of 5 megapixel with autofocus and a really bright flash. Despite being a phone you don’t really give up any features with the Omnia’s camera.

You get shooting modes like burst mode, panorama plus a smile detection mode. While it does work sometimes I didn’t find the smile detection worked well. Scene modes adjust certain camera settings so that their optimal based on the mode you select; they include portrait, landscape, sports, beach and snow, sunset, etc.

There’s a timer, white balance settings, different metering centers, digital image stabilization and even ISO settings. The ISO settings go up to a claimed 800.

The lens takes about 1.5 to 2.5 seconds to focus.

Image quality is excellent – as long as you don’t use the flash. It’s among the best I have tested. It takes very good pictures regardless the lighting condition

I found the flash had a tendency to blast everything out if you leave it on. It’s as if the Omnia is incapable of adjusting for the flash. Luckily the Omnia has excellent low light performance if you turn up the ISO.

There is a video editor which you can use to edit or create videos using pictures/video on the phone.

If you want to tether via Bluetooth the Omnia only supports Bluetooth PAN.

Besides the Samsung apps you also get Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile and OneNote Mobile.

Messaging is handled by the built in Windows Mobile messaging client. The Client supports SMS plus email. You get IMAP, POP and MS Exchange support.

Smart converter is a very easy to use unit converter. Smart memo lets you draw on the screen and then save the drawings.

Performance:

Sound quality is very good

RF performance on the other hand is pretty poor. I tested the Omnia against a Motorola v3c on the same network and found the Omnia dropped calls where the v3c was cutting in and out slightly. Ouch.

Battery life is okay, you should get up to 2 days with moderate usage with Bluetooth and Wifi on.

One thing I really noticed when I was testing the sound quality/RF is that the stylus is a real nuisance because it always gets in the way when you’re holding the Omnia to your ear. If you’re going to talk a lot on the Omnia use a headset.

More Thoughts and Conclusion:

The Samsung Omnia i910 is one of the most exciting Windows mobile devices that I have used in a long time. And while adequately featured I’m not excited because it has monster specifications. Instead it’s because I found Samsung’s applications to be a huge breath of fresh air. Address book, media player, picture viewer, clock and browser are all different from the default. You also get Widgets (including a weather one),

The camera is outstanding, easily the most capable with the highest image quality I have tried.

There also decent amount of memory (8GB + a memory card), haptic feed

That said the Omnia has some serious usability issues. The stylus is a total nusance if you make a lot of calls and are not using a headset. The low speaker volume also causes problems.

The RF performance is nothing to write home about.

In the end the Omnia is a real mixed bag, if you can accept it’s weaknesses you’ll find it an interesting phone.

Like? Find Samsung Omnia i910 Phone, Silver (Verizon Wireless) at Amazon.com just $150

HowardChui.com>

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