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.

(continue reading…)