Samsung Omnia - First Impression

I have owned Samsung Omnia i900V for a week now. The letter 'V' indicates that it is a Vodafone unit. I must say that I am very impressed with it. Maybe it is still a new thing to me as in the past; I preferred Symbian powered mobile phones.

Before I made my purchase, I read a lot of reviews. Like other phones, Samsung Omnia has its good and bad points. I never really pay attention to the good points because I already know what the phone is capable of doing by knowing the specifications. Bad points are the things that will determine whether I will hate or love the phone at the end of the day. However, some bad points can be easily solved by updating the ROM or firmware.

Somehow, I settled for a used unit as I am still not convinced that a mobile phone costing almost £400 is worth buying. Mind you, Samsung Omnia is £100 more than my Samsung NC10 while you can easily get a used unit for half the original price. And I get 1 year warranty.

The Screen
The first to note is the poor sunlight legibility. Yesterday was bright and sunny and I found it a little bit hard to see the screen contents. Well, this is not something to worry too much as we do not get much sunlight in UK as compared to Malaysia, do we?

When I first got Samsung Omnia, the touchscreen was not responsive and I often had to press hard on the touchscreen. However, an upgrade of ROM made the touchscreen more responsive although I still have to apply a reasonable amount of pressure on the touchscreen.

Stylus
There is no stylus slot and Samsung has chosen to use an external stylus for Omnia. Navigating around Samsung Omnia is easy by thumb-tapping but a stylus is almost a must to avoid frustration when you want to change the settings.

Camera
At 5 megapixels, I thought the camera is great. The pictures taken are good and I bet some reviews saying that Samsung Omnia's camera was poor were reviewed by "professional" photographer. From my point of view, a mobile phone camera with face detection, smile detection, flash and several photo mode selections is good enough to have. However, the flash seems to be too bright that pictures taken are almost white in color.

WiFi and GPS
WiFi connection is easy to setup and fast. I have seen some guides that transforming Samsung Omnia into a wireless router. That is worth trying though. My original Samsung Omnia unit did not come with any navigator. However, Google Map comes preinstalled when I upgraded the ROM to Malaysia's ROM which debranded it essentially. GPS takes a few minutes to detect the satellite while Google Map requires constant internet connection which does not make sense if I were to use it outdoor unless I have unlimited internet data plan with my service provider. In the end, I installed iGO 8 and it works a treat.

It manages Windows Mobile almost flawlessly. Other than that, 8GB of storage is more than enough for me while some people opt for 16GB version. I would love to have a 3.5mm headphone jack and a standard USB port on Samsung Omnia. However, I can live without them too.

Conclusion
When Samsung was actively involved in mobile phones technologies, people were complaining about the battery life. Certainly, things have changed. My Samsung NC10 has served me well and the netbook has given me a sense of direction which leads me to buy another Samsung product, Omnia. Needless to say, I am equally pleased with Samsung Omnia.

By KH Tan