THE SAMSUNG 1900 Omnia is a phone— from a marketing standpoint- apparently designed solely to compete with the iPhone. It may fall short of Apples Liber-hyped device, but what Samsung came up with is a very sweet smart phone.
In terms of build, the Omnia even trumps the iPhone. It feels solid and has a well-balanced heft. Features-wise, Samsung threw everything in their arsenal into the Omnia: touch screen, 5—megapixel autofocus camera, 3.5G {HSDPA) connectivity, fast CPU, up to 16GB of storage, RDS Radio, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a latté machine. Ok, we were kidding about the latté.
The Omnia is one of the new generations of Windows Mobile phones to utilize version 6.1, which features threaded SMS messages. Text messages appear r in chat form as pioneered by the Treo. Seeing it implemented on the Omnia makes you realize, it’s about damn time.
The areas where the Omnia falls short are where it tries to match the iPhone. First, there's the accelerometer, which changes the orientation of the screen automatically. 1t’s tricky enough on the iPhone; here it just feels unnatural. Next is the touch screen keyboard. After a few days it was still difficult to input text quickly and accurately.
The interface that Samsung has created on top of WinMo is stylish and effective. The problem is when you use the apps and enter the realm of WinMo, the OS loses its aesthetic appeal. It feels like four years ago.
As an iPhone competitor, Samsung has created a potent challenger in the Omnia with technically better hardware than the iPhone. But it loses out when pitted against a proven strength of Apples products: the software.
SCREEN 3.2·inch WQVGA TFT touchscreen LCD
CONNECTIVITY Quad-band GSM, HSDPA, WiFi.
GPS. Bluetooth 2.0 A2DP
PLATFORM Windows Mobile 6.1
CAMERA 5 megapixel with AF
STORAGE 128MB RAM, 256MB ROM. 8/16GB of
storage + microSDHC
BATTERY LIFE 6h talk time/500h standby
SIZE/WEIGHT 1l2x56.9x12.5mm/127g
