Translated from Greek, the name of Samsung’s new model means “everything” and its main purpose is to fully satisfy the needs of the modern cell phone user. This is a phone with a unique combination of characteristics such as 5-megapixel camera, large touch display and GPS, taking advantage of the Windows Mobile 6.1 platform. In addition, this is the first device with a built-in support of not only DivX, but XviD video.

Design

Nowadays, the design is everything. Even a very good product would quickly be forgotten if it doesn’t come in a shiny package. Luckily, OMNIA is well prepared in this aspect. It is one of the most attractive Windows Mobile devices.

The display is 3.2 inch one, which makes it comparable to the famous iPhone. Unfortunately, resolution wise, it is behind the leaders. We think that WVGA would suit it much better, compared to the 240х400 it has now. Nevertheless, the screen offers good image quality, but we have a few remarks regarding the colors, which have a light yellow hue. It is almost impossible to use it in direct sunlight, which is a big drawback. We have nothing to say about the sensitivity, even though Apple’s baby is still far ahead. Every touch is accompanied by a gentle vibration, no matter if you have activated any function and often, that could mislead you if you have tapped the wrong place. In addition, you have an extremely fashionable stylus at your disposal, which could be easily replaced by any object.

The only objects on the front are two large and relatively easy to press hardware buttons (Send/End keys) and an “optical” mouse, like in Samsung i780. When the virtual cursor is not active, it the mouse has the role of a D-pad and you have to run your finger in the direction desired. Overall, this alternative input method is good, but you'll never feel a need to use it while operating the phone.

The rest of the hardware buttons are on the right side. All of them have a decent size and are easily felt once pressed, which makes them user-friendly. On top of that, they have multiple functions. When held, the button for entering the main menu activates the Task switcher. By using the key for turning the volume up, you can switch on the zoom, no matter which menu you are in. Pressing the camera “trigger” one time leads to the gallery. Even though it is not revolutionary, we have to congratulate Samsung for the realization of the idea. Multifunctionality is the way!

The opposite side houses the strap “hook” for accessories (in our case stylus, but if you are a fan of Snoop Dogg – big purple dice) and the charger connector. To our regret, the last one is not a standard miniUSB, which is more popular since it is used in various electronic devices and could, for example, save you the purchase of a separate cable for the phone and for the camera. On top, we have the small and hard to press power button, accompanied by the one for hardware restart, which is accessible only with a stylus.

On the back, we find the 5-megapixel camera with flash. To get to the microSD slot, you’ll have to remove the battery lid. In contrast to the one we saw in the prototype, which looked like rubber-coated, now, it resembles polished metal. It looks good, but we think that a metal surface would suit the device better.

Despite OMNIA’s beautiful appearance, we don’t think that’s its most attractive asset. For an all-in-one device, the user-friendly interface and the rich multimedia functionality are of more importance.

Interface

All-in-one, but user friendly. That’s the main idea of the personalized Windows Mobile interface, which Samsung OMNIA runs on. Although called TouchWiz by the manufacturer, the only similarity it has with the one seen in F480, are the widgets.

The overall impression the interface creates is for incompleteness. Some elements like the homescreen, the main menu and the contacts for example, have been modified in such a way that they resemble the non-smart phones and their purpose is to facilitate operating entirely with fingers. However, the original Windows Mobile applications with small and inconvenient icons, forcing you to use a stylus, are actually always apparent. They are closed from the top right corner, and the personalized ones from the bottom left, which is very annoying as well. We appreciate the attempt made by the manufacturer to modify the phone, thus allowing a wider consumer audience to use it, but it’s not working. All most frequently used functions had to be redesigned and not only a few, just to say they’ve done it. The final touches of such details are what make the difference between a good and an exceptional device.

We were impressed by the fact that scrolling is done as in F480 and most other phones with sensitive displays, and not like the previous Samsung models. In order to scroll you have to run your finger on the screen in the direction opposite to the one you want to move to.

We shouldn’t forget the presence of the accelerometer, which main function is to rotate the picture, depending on the phone’s positioning (however, you cannot turn it upside-down). The transition is not annoying when working with the OMNIA, and we will discuss the interesting application of that extra later on. Unfortunately, there are no preloaded programs, which to let you fully take advantage of that function like in the game Teeter, seen in HTC Touch Diamond.

There are two possible variants of the Homescreen. The first option represents it divided in three tabs with the main one housing the clock, call log shortcut, messages and e-mails. The other two are intended for speed dialing and frequently used settings (like activating the motion sensor, the mouse cursor, Bluetooth and WiFi). This way of organizing reminds us of the convenient and orderly HTC Home plug-in, we know from HTC Touch. Regrettably, the options offered in OMNIA’s tabs are much less and you cannot take advantage of the full functionality the device offers, just by relying on them. If you want to have more applications on the screen, it is mandatory that you use the stylus to scroll among them since the arrows become miniature. In landscape mode, the majority of the icons remain hidden, which is annoying.

The other option is “our favorite” Widget screen, we are familiar with from F480. Thanks to it, you have access to a few different types of clocks, calendar, music player, radio, profiles, game shortcuts and notes. The last ones appear to be an innovation, but unfortunately, have a limited functionality since their contents is not visible. All these elements can be moved around, according to your needs. On top of that, due to the accelerometer, you actually have two such displays, depending on the screen orientation. This allows you to have plenty of applications and get fast access to them, bypassing the limited screen size.

The main menu is a big innovation. It has large icons, which are extremely convenient for work with fingers and it looks like the menu of a regular phone, structured in a grid. This feature gives you access to all functions and makes the standard Windows Menu pointless.

It gives you access to a shortcut submenu where you can choose 11 from all applications available and put them in order, by drag & dropping them. The submenu combining all those programs in an alphabetized list is also very nice. It will save you wandering around, but you’ll have to do some heavy scrolling.

Phonebook

The idea of the phonebook is similar to the one seen in iPhone; it gives you fast access to a specific letter by selecting it from the field on the right-hand side. It’s nice that the names are written out with a very large font. Once you chose a given contact, the next personalized screen appears, from which, thanks to the enlarged icons, you will be able to easily dial the mobile, home, or the office number of the person and to send a message. The Caller ID, which unfortunately, is very small here and on incoming call, is also visible. 

Aside from it, you can setup a ringtone, multiple numbers, addresses, emails and notes. Naturally, the search is done by both parts of the name, but there are no number matches. In order to take advantage of this function, you need to enter in the dial pad. When inputting numbers there, the search is done in both, the phonebook and the call log, by name and number.

Organizer
  
The story with OMNIA’s alarms is quite strange. From the menu with the same name, you can set up to seven different ones with various options, including radio melody. If you want to do this from the main screen however (by clicking on the clock), there will be three other alarms available with more simplified functions, which are standard for Windows Mobile. However, the fact that all the alarms are not gathered in one menu can lead to serious confusion.

The Calendar is absolutely standard for a Windows Mobile device and here, you can enter your appointments. You can use options like: reminder (PRIOR NOTICE 1/5/10/15/30/45 minutes, 1/2/3/4/5/6 hour/day/week), recurrence (Once, Every (same-day-of-the-week), Day (same-date) of every month, Every (same date-and-month) for every year, sensitivity (normal, personal, private, confidential). You can also add attendees (required or optional) from your contacts where e-mail addresses have been added and where meeting requests will be sent.
   
Calendar

Examining the calendar can be done by day/week/month/year/agenda and you can choose starting day for the week and the week duration (5-6-7-day week). The appointments for the day are clearly shown in their time limits, so you can see your free time at a glance.

You have Tasks menu, where you can add to-do items. For a given Task you can set subject, priority (normal, low, and high), start/due date, reminder (to be notified if it’s due), category (business, holiday, personal, seasonal) and write a note. The Task can have recurrence (Once, Every (same-day-of-the-week), Day (same-date) of every month, every (same date-date-and-month) for every year and sensitivity (normal, personal, private, confidential). Examining the tasks in a list, you can easily see which of them are finished and which are not. The tasks options can be: sort by (status, priority, subject, start date, due date) or filter (all, recent, no categories, active, completed).

The Calculator is simple but its buttons are relatively big and can easily be pressed with your fingers. Features like scientific calculator and unit converter are still missing. ‘Notes’ are simple notes in which you can input text by the keyboard or by hand as an image. They can be synchronized with outlook.

Search is an application searching in all files in the phone. You can specify certain types of files (calendar/contacts/excel/messaging/notes/etc), but the best option is All Data, which will rummage everything in your phone. File Explorer is the mobile alternative of Explorer in Windows environment with computers. We use it to view the phone memory, including the system folders of the device, which feels like working on a PC.

The phone is offered in two variants – with 8 or 16 GB built-in memory. If that’s not enough, you can expand it up to 32GB via a microSD HC card. In other words, you can own a mobile device with the “modest” 48 GB of memory. Samsung i900 Omnia offers generous file storage capacity. The handset comes in two flavors - one with 8GB and another one with 16GB worth of data storage. Our test Omnia unit had 8 gigs on board.

The WinMo file manager on the Omnia

The Samsung Omnia even has a microSD card slot, which easily worked with 4GB and 8GB memory cards. However, the downside of Omnia's implementation is that the slot is not hot-swappable - you have to remove the battery in order to access it.

Bear in mind that those figures will be lower on a Vista-based PC for some Microsoft-only-knows-why reason. That's another story entirely and we'd rather stayed out of it.
Image gallery is excellent

When it comes to image browsing, the Samsung Omnia Media Album is really fast displaying and browsing those 5 megapixel images fullscreen. It's actually a full featured file browser that shows only multimedia folder contents. Since it's universal (not only photo-centric), you can filter the shown files by type - image, video, music, and documents.

Back to image browsing, the Media Album certainly benefits from the auto screen rotation feature. Zooming is as easy as on the Apple iPhone for example. You zoom in and out by simply dragging your thumb up or down the image. The first zoom step is a bit slow, but we are talking 5 megapixel images here. At this point we are really pleased with the Samsung solution.

Further on, if you want to see a slide show of your images, you can use the dedicated app that Samsung have also preinstalled.

Music

The Samsung Touch Player caters for the music department on the Omnia. You can sort music by album, artist, and genre or you can create custom playlists. Sorting the tracks by album brings the album cover interface. The album covers look nice and large, and can also be displayed full screen while you're listening to music. We are glad that in the retail version that we received the scrolling speed is much improved as compared to the first Omnia we had a chance to play with.

Windows Mobile devices have never been known for even decent audio output. Their business mindset has so far served as a good excuse for the poor audio. However, as the Samsung i900 Omnia is considered a multimedia device, it is about time this changed.

Since we published our Diamond vs. Omnia article, we received a final retail version of the Samsung i900 Omnia. While, we weren't quite satisfied with the first Omnia audio quality, things have changed with the retail version.

The Samsung Omnia is the first DivX certified Windows Mobile device, so you get DivX playback straight out of the box on the same Touch Player that is used for music playback. Now there's some confusion roaming around that the Omnia has XviD support too, but we've played with a total of four different units - each at different stage of developement and XviD support was not present on any of them.

Camera

Samsung OMNIA is one of the first Windows Mobile devices sporting a 5-megapixel camera (G-Smart MS820 was announced earlier this year). It  is equipped with autofocus, flash and many options borrowed from the high-class cameraphones. The picture and video quality are with them. In contrast to the rest of the phones running on that OS, OMNIA far ahead.

The first thing that impressed us was its operating speed. The interface starts somewhat sluggish (about 3 seconds), but focusing and saving is very quick (2 seconds each). It is optimized for working entirely with fingers and has large icons with clearly marked functions. All main options (flash, resolution, focus, exposure, shooting mode and scenes) are visible on the screen. Thanks to them, after just couple of taps you can choose an option without having to go through complicated menus, to scroll or confirm. There also are shortcuts to the gallery and the camcorder.

The rest of the settings are separated in two tabs with a few pages each. The first one lets you change the quality (compression), the white balance, to add effects, to change the ISO sensitivity (up to 800), contrast, sharpness, color saturation and focusing mode (center, in a point or matrix). On top of that, if you activate the GPS you will be able to tag the picture with information about the place where it was taken. This would give you the unique ability to send a tagged picture to your buddy saying for example “Look at the honeys in South Beach” without giving him the chance to accuse you in masterful use of Photoshop. However, we prefer using Adobe’s software instead of the Wide Dynamic Ranger option, with which is equipped the camera, because it simply enlightens the darker areas. By using some of the options mentioned above (like the Color swap for example), you can achieve very artistic results.
   
Camera Settings

The second tab gives you access to more general options as for example, where to save the images, how long do you want the camera to be active for, should there be guiding lines, etc.

However, the variety of functions is not the most important for a camera. The overall quality of the pictures taken with OMNIA is over the average. The outdoor photographs have well saturated and beautiful, but unreal colors. The fine detail level is slightly behind the top 5-megapixel phones we’ve used. Indoors, the results are worse, especially if there isn’t a good light source. The images have a lot of noise and low detail level. If you intend to snap pictures in the dark, bear in mind that the flash is very bright and it has to be used from a good distance in order not to blind somebody. In macro mode, the camera performs better, as long as you are not extremely close to the object being photographed. Here, the flash brightness is automatically reduced so it can be used.

When recording a video, you can use the majority of the effects and settings accessible in the picture mode. The max resolution is 640х480 with 15 fps, and the format used is MPEG4, which promises better results than the outdated 3gp. Unfortunately, the videos are choppy when watching (even on a PC) and recording, which is very annoying. This makes the camera unsuitable for recording dynamic videos, which is rather disappointing. The sound, even though accompanied with a slight noise, is relatively good.

GPS navigator

The Samsung i900 Omnia features a built-in GPS receiver - probably manufactured by Samsung themselves, though that's not confirmed by the company. The Omnia supports A-GPS - it means you can download current satellite data over Wi-Fi or the 2G/3G network for a much faster satellite lock upon cold start. While a cold start can take anywhere between 5 or 7 minutes, with A-GPS lock is obtained within a minute.

The Omnia doesn't have a GPS navigation application pre-installed, so you have to purchase one separately. Google Maps however comes on-board, so you can use that as a primer. The i900 Omnia performed admirably as an in-car navigation unit. While its display is not legible enough in bright sunlight, we had no problem with it on the dashboard.

We did a dedicated GPS battery test to see how far you can get with the Omnia in GPS mode. We clocked the Samsung i900 at standstill position with constant full satellite lock. It pulled off a nice result of 4 hours and 20 minutes. You should bear in mind that in a moving vehicle those numbers will be lower. Just for the sake of comparison, the HTC Touch Cruise and the HTC TyTN II lasted about 3.5 - 4 hours in this same test. The Asus P750 however managed to outshine them all by a good margin - it kept going for 6 hours straight.

Conclusion

The Samsung i900 Omnia has left us with nothing but good impressions. Everything about the device speaks "high-tech" - from the innovative touch interface through the rich connectivity and multimedia capabilities to the exclusive hardware characteristics such as the optical touchpad or the 5 megapixel camera.

It's probably the first time that a Windows Mobile PocketPC turns out as a fully-fledged multimedia device. Samsung have made sure that the i900 Omnia is equally fit for both business and entertainment. Of course there are a few downers - some things are not up to the expected high standards (such as the sunlight legibility of display) while other stuff will benefit from some tweaking or software updating (such as the camera performance and the Flash support).

But overall the Samsung Omnia is a well-balanced product that seems in for some major success on the market. We think that "balanced" is the key word here as the major competitors - the HTC Touch Diamond and the iPhone 3G - seem to offer more in some respects but severely fall behind in others. And what's more, at a startup price of 500 euro, the Samsung i900 Omnia is also a good value for money as this kind of cash would hardly buy you a more complete feature pack than that.