Review of Samsung's i900 Omnia multimedia powerhouse

HTC made a big splash in the Windows Mobile world of smartphones last year when it introduced the Touch, a smartphone that was pretty much all touchscreen and was intended to be controlled with a finger. Earlier this year HTC came up big again with the Touch Diamond, adding a VGA display and a new UI to the mix. While it might be a bit late to the party, Samsung has put forth the SGH-i900 Omnia to show, in a big way, that it, too, can compete on the Windows Mobile multimedia smartphone front. With features like a 5 megapixel autofocus camera, up to 16GB of built-in storage, a built-in GPS, and automatic screen rotation, the Omnia certainly has a lot of WinMo fans drooling.

Thanks to WirelessImports.com for loaning us the Samsung Omnia used for this review.

Physical Aspects

Like many similar devices, the finger touch oriented Samsung Omnia bears a simple design. The front is dominated by the 3.2" WQVGA resolution (240x400 pixel) touchscreen display. The display is flush mounted, which means that a fingerprint free screen is never more than a pants leg swipe away. Below the display one finds the call send and end keys, and the optical "mouse" directional controller, which replaces a conventional d-pad. A graphite colored chrome rim frames the front of the Omnia, and I was surprised that it stayed quite clean looking. The sides of the Omnia are made of a semi-gloss black plastic, and the back cover, which is home to the camera and flash, is made of a dark matte plastic with a brushed finish.

The only other items of note are found on the edge of the phone. The left edge is home to the Samsung power/headset/USB connector and a lanyard loop, and the right edge is where the volume, camera, and Samsung menu keys are found. A somewhat finicky power/standby button is on the top edge of the phone, next to an old-school reset button. There is no externally accessible microSD card slot, though. The microSD slot is found under the rear cover and requires that the battery be removed in order to access it. Since the Omnia has 8 or 16GB of internal storage, and a fast USB connection, that's not too much of a hassle.

The large 3.2" display is sufficiently bright for most situations, and can be set to automatically adjust its brightness based on the amount of ambient light available to save power. While a stylus is included for use with the display, it must be attached to the phone via the lanyard loop, so many people will probably prefer to do without, even though the touchscreen can seem, at times, difficult to use accurately with a fingertip or nail.

The optical mouse controller works in one of two ways. It can be used in a d-pad like fashion that lets the user swipe a finger across in one one of the four cardinal directions to move up, down, left, or right. Sometimes, but not always, a fast swipe will cause the Omnia to scroll quickly (and uncontrollably). The other mode of control is to use a real mouse pointer to control the phone, much like the red and green TrackPoint controllers found embedded in the keyboards of some Lenovo and Toshiba laptops. The mouse is surprisingly easy to use in this mode, but is of little real use other than with the Opera web browser. Regardless of the control mode that is activated, pressing on the mouse will select the currently highlighted on-screen item or button.

With a weight of 122.5g (4.3oz) and a size of 112.5mm x 57.0mm x 13.5mm (4.4" x 2.2" x .5"), the i900 Omnia is very pocketable. It feels solidly built and durable. One always has to worry what keys or coins could do to an exposed touchscreen display, but I would imagine that the Omnia will hold up reasonably well. My only gripe is that the WQVGA display makes the phone taller than it would otherwise need be, and reaching the upper right hand corner of the device, where Windows Mobile places the constantly used OK and X buttons, can be quite difficult with one hand - even for somebody with large hands.

While I am also not a huge fan of the optical mouse, I still think that Samsung has done a pretty good job with the SGH-i900 Omnia from an overall design perspective.

Core Functions

The Samsung SGH-i900 Omnia that we tested was equipped with quad-band GSM and 2100MHz UMTS support. So while it works across North America, Omnia users in that part of the world will have to do without 3G support. Reception on the Omnia was acceptable, and call audio quality seemed very good. The speakerphone also performed well. Our battery test showed the Omnia to be capable of well over 10 hours of GSM talk time, though users on a UMTS network should expect no more than 5.5 hours of talk time.



While the Omnia sports the standard Windows Mobile contact management system, it also comes equipped with Samsung's own contacts application, Phonebook. Phonebook is basically a more finger friendly version of the standard Contacts app. It uses larger fonts, and provides a nice index along the right hand edge of the contact list. When a contact is selected, Phonebook gives users a set of large buttons that can be easily pressed to initiate a call or send a text message. The only thing missing from Phonebook is the ability to search on first and last names at the same time, which the standard app can do. It is also worth mentioning that both apps can be a bit difficult to search in when the Omnia is configured to use the Phonepad input method, which uses predictive text.

As a Windows Mobile Professional device, the Omnia has no true profile management system. It merely offers users the ability to run in normal, vibrate, or silent modes. Vibrate mode can be toggled quickly by long pressing the on-screen # key from the dial pad. The Omnia appears to lack support for normal speed dialing, but makes up for that in part by adding quick contact access to one of its home screen layouts. Voice dialing is also absent, which seems odd. I was quite pleased with Samsung's call management software, though, which replaces the standard Windows Mobile apps. One of the nice things was that it gives users the ability to jot down a quick note at the end of the call, and that the note is pre-filled with the contact's name and the time and date of the call. Quite handy.

The Omnia uses the standard Inbox application for managing email, and supports Windows Mobile 6.1's threaded SMS as well, but uses its own editor for SMS and MMS messaging. The new editor assumes that messages are SMS until the user tries to add some sort of media file, at which point it warns the user that this will turn the message into an MMS and gives them the chance to reconsider. The editor itself is also different, and was designed with Samsung's various on-screen text input methods in mind. The MSN Messenger client is pre-loaded on the Omnia. Overall the messaging support is solid, the issue is the text input.

Samsung offers three new text input methods in addition to the standard Windows Mobile methods. The Samsung Keyboard is a large QWERTY layout virtual keyboard. The keys are quite narrow when the display is in the normal portrait orientation, and they can be very difficult to use. Turning the phone to landscape mode helps significantly, but the lack of vibration feedback on the keyboard still leaves us wanting a better solution. Samsung also offers virtual 20 key and 12 key keypads that work decently. The 20 key keyboard would be a great solution if the user didn't have to switch it to symbol mode and back every time a simple period (full stop) is required at the end of a sentence. This makes it a pain to use for any real messaging tasks. The 12 key setup works nicely, though. But, just as with the QWERTY keyboard, they both sorely need haptic vibration feedback.

As a 3G HSDPA device, the Samsung i900 Omnia is capable of quick data connections without being tied to WiFi networks, which the Omnia also supports. Since the Omnia we tested was configured for the 2100MHz UMTS networks found in Europe and some other parts of the world, we were unable to test 3G connectivity speeds. The EDGE support worked out well enough for us, though, and the phone can be easily used as a modem thanks to WinMo's Internet Connection Sharing app. Other wireless connectivity needs on the Omnia are handled by Bluetooth for headsets, stereo headphones, and data, but the Omnia's Bluetooth range seems to be somewhat limited. USB is a great option for moving around files, since the connections to a PC through the included USB cable proved to be blazingly fast.

Multimedia / Applications

With either 8GB or 16GB of built-in internal storage, depending on the configuration, it is obvious that Samsung's SGH-i900 Omnia has some lofty multimedia aspirations. Overall, it lives up to the expectations - especially when it comes to its 5 megapixel autofocus camera. It lacks an optical zoom, but the camera otherwise takes some of the best photos that I have seen come out of a cameraphone. The color balance is very accurate, in anything but poor lighting the focus is usually spot on, and the photos don't look overly sharpened and don't appear to have been hit too hard with noise reduction algorithms.



The finger friendly touch screen user interface is a virtual pleasure cruise to use, and advanced features like face detection and smile mode work quite well. Face detection mode does a good job of locating faces in the frame, even recognizing them in other photos. The smile mode is really nice, too, as it causes the camera to wait until the subject smiles before snapping the photo. The camera can also be used to record videos at up to VGA resolution. In short, the camera is one of the best features on the phone by far. Samsung did an excellent job with it.

Like other Windows Mobile smartphones, the i900 Omnia comes equipped with Windows Media Player. Samsung, however, chose to add its own player to the mix, which it has named TouchPlayer. TouchPlayer has the same base capabilities as Windows Media Player, but is far easier to use with fingers thanks to its larger buttons and font sizes. It supports album art and background music play, and instantly found the music I had synchronized to the phone with a desktop PC's Windows Media Player app. If you prefer your music over the airwaves, the Omnia's FM radio has got you covered.

The Omnia has a built-in GPS module that can be used with the pre-loaded Google Maps application. The phone can be setup to automatically download satellite positioning hint data daily to help speed up the process of finding an initial location. The Google Launcher app can be used to bring up Maps or to load Gmail in the Omnia's Opera browser. The browser is basically the same as the one found in the HTC Touch Diamond, which means it provides a true desktop experience. My only complaint would be that when panning around with a finger, the display doesn't track the finger movement well, always seeming to scroll more than your finger drags it.

In addition to the many organizer applications on the Omnia, such as the calendar and tasks, Samsung also loaded the smartphone with a number of media viewers for photos and other media files, as well as clocks, video editors (for cropping), and even a TV-out function. Full versions of Microsoft's Office Mobile suite are also included, though I doubt that many people will do any real document creation when forced to use the Omnia's on-screen text input methods.

While the Omnia's 96MB of application RAM always seemed sufficient, I did run across a problem that kept me from using the camera. I had been testing out some of the phone's messaging UI extensions, which involve panning and zooming, and then received a message from the phone telling me that it was out of "video memory" when I tried to run the camera. The phone suggested that I close some other applications to address the problem, but even with all other applications killed off, the problem remained. Once I reset the phone everything worked again, but this still points to some sort of memory leak problem with some of Samsung's software.

User Interface

As a Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional smartphone, much of the Samsung i900 Omnia's user interface is the same as on dozens of other devices. But like HTC, with its Touch lineup, Samsung has attempted to replace or augment a large portion of the basic WM6.1 user interface found on the Omnia with the goal of making it more finger friendly. In many ways, it has been successful. Just not completely so.

The most obvious additions that Samsung has made to the WM6.1 platform are its today (standby) screens. The "widget" screen that the device is configured with by default lets users drag and drop various controls and info boxes about the screen. It is interesting, but largely useless. Better are the two other Today screen plug-ins on offer. Each of them displays a nice statically laid out and finger friendly array of icons and information. One of them, which supports basic swipe gestures, goes even further by providing quick access to picture contact speed dials as well as commonly changed settings. The combination of these Today screens and the Samsung authored menus that are called up with the dedicated menu key make it easy to get to most commonly used phone functions. For a good introduction to them, check out the video on the first page of this review.

While the Today screens and Samsung's own menus provide vibration haptic feedback when the touchscreen is pressed, the rest of its own apps and text input methods, as previously mentioned, do not. This is a shame because the vibration feedback really has a majorly positive impact on how easy the touchscreen is to use. One thing that Samsung did get right, though, was the automatic screen rotation system. Turning the phone clockwise or counterclockwise 90 degrees will automatically rotate the screen, while providing an optional vibration effect as well. All of the apps on the phone support this, and Samsung's own menus and Today screens were designed with this functionality in mind. It is an incredibly nice feature to have on the phone. Samsung goes one step further by automatically muting the phone whenever it is placed face down. This works with inbound calls, music playing in the media player, or anything that makes a noise except for the alarm.



There are a number of misses in the Omnia's system, though. Firstly, only the Samsung applications, of which there are many, support finger scrolling. The notable exception being Opera, which also responds to finger gestures. Applications like the messaging Inbox and the stock Contacts app don't support finger scrolling at all, which makes them difficult to use. The optical mouse's scrolling feature is poor, at best. Samsung tried, somewhat half-heartedly, to address the issue in the messaging app by letting users double tap on the screen to bring up a separate mail viewer with finger controlled zoom level and panning. It's workable, but less than optimal. There is also, sometimes, a separate screen magnifier function that can be bright up that supports panning and scrolling with a finger - but the documentation doesn't mention it (or much at all, honestly), and I have only been able to call it up a few times.

Another issue with the Omnia is that it, at times, seems to need more CPU power. This is sometimes the case when playing music in the background, and always the case when scrolling in Samsung's Phonebook application. The fact that the touchscreen calibration never seems quite right when used with a finger makes everything more difficult. This isn't a general problem with the Omnia, but one that users will stumble upon occasionally. Similarly, our early production Omnia experienced a few crashes, too, that required a reset to address.

Overall I feel that Samsung has done a solid job with its extensions and new apps for Windows Mobile Professional. I prefer the Omnia's finger menu system and applications by far to those in HTC's TouchFLO 3D. TouchFLO 3D is visually stunning, but the Omnia's system is much more usable, and still manages to be fun. I'll take that any day. The automatic screen rotation is a wonderful feature that all smartphones should support, too, but Samsung really needs to add generic finger scrolling to all apps, a feat that HTC managed with its very first Touch well over a year ago. It isn't perfect, especially since the touchscreen seems inaccurate when not using a stylus, but I still like it better than a plane Jane Windows Mobile setup.

Conclusion

If you are a fan of devices like the Apple iPhone and the HTC Touch Diamond, the Samsung Omnia is probably going to capture your interest. Samsung's done a good job of layering some new functionality over what is otherwise a somewhat dated Windows Mobile user interface. The Samsung extensions and menus are visually appealing and fun to use, not to mention functional. The Omnia's superb camera should be considered a lesson to other manufacturers on how things should be done in a smartphone, and having up to 16GB of built-in storage as well as supporting microSD cards means that there are few devices in production that can carry around more media files than the Omnia. That's all great stuff.



But the Omnia has its flaws. While I appreciate the extra pixels, I think that a WQVGA display was a poor choice for a number of reasons. A more conventionally sized VGA display would have made more sense in my opinion, offering both more resolution as well as making the phone easier to use with one hand since it wouldn't have to be as tall. The display is not the best performer when it comes to positioning accuracy, either.

The big problem, though, is the text input. The virtual 12 key T9 keypad works well, but the 20 key and QWERTY keyboards both have real usability problems. In the end, the text input and display issues, which are somewhat related, are enough to keep me from giving the Omnia our top rating. Still, though, it is a very enjoyable device that suits passive email consumers very well, and it earns a solid "Recommended" rating.