Samsung Omnia (SCH-i910) Review

Samsung i910 Omnia Review

Featuring a large 3.2-inch touchscreen and sporting a 5MP camera, the Samsung Omnia aims squarely at Apple's iPhone.

Summary

Like the Blackberry Storm, the Samsung Omnia is part of the first wave of post-iPhone smartphones aimed directly for the Apple market. From its lack of a keyboard to its multimedia capabilities, Samsung is going for convenience, portability and multi-functionality. It is a valiant attempt, but lots of unusual design choices make the Omnia more awkward than progressive.

Features and Design

The Samsung Omnia is four and a half inches by just over two inches, and about a half inch thick. In other words, it carries the same dimension as the older iPhone. It feels lightweight, however, perhaps because of the smooth, plastic backing and the equally smooth Plexiglas-style front. It isn’t a featherweight – you won’t forget it in the laundry – but it is a lot lighter than it or other comparable smartphones look. And, equally surprising, the phone seems to have a solid grip despite no visible grooves. It won’t slip out of butterfingers.

It is a candy bar phone, so the back is a solid black shell, the front a silver and charcoal frame around a 3.2 inch touchscreen. There are only three buttons on the front. The first two, shaped like a filled box and an empty box, are menu open and menu close buttons, the equivalent of what would be usually a green and a red button on a traditional phone. (It’s not clear why Samsung, other than for style reasons, would change this standard.) The final button – in the bottom middle of the front – isn’t so much a button as it is a very small touchpad. Run your finger over it and it will scroll the current item or menu in the desired direction. The phone will vibrate slightly when you do, like the phone rang briefly, with a low-pitch, accompanying “thud” sound. The pad itself was smaller than my pinky.

Atop the phone are the reset and power buttons. On the right side are the quick keys for the main menu, the volume control and the camera/camcorder switch. On the left side is an all-purpose port for power and data transfer cords. Finally, there is a small camera lens on the back tucked behind a plastic cover.

The Samsung Omnia is a GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone, tri-band 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz, and is available in America through Verizon. The Internet browsing was rather creaky through traditional cell towers, but the Omnia can also use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Price

Also known as the i910, the Samsung Omnia runs $319.99 MSRP, which is a pretty penny considering that comparable smartphones are available for cheaper and better smartphones are available for just a little bit more. At launch Verizon offered a $70 mail-in rebate, making it a more reasonable $249.99. And, of course, you’ll want to add in additional money for a microSD card to save additional multimedia. More information is available at http://www.verizonwireless.com.

Setup and Use

There are lots of material and attachments inside of the Samsung Omnia package. Inside you’ll find a USB cord, headphone adapter, and FM radio antenna, along with a physical instruction booklet, CD instructions, an additional CD with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and, finally, a VZAccess Manager CD with Verizon’s proprietary multimedia software and Internet program.

As mentioned earlier, using the Samsung Omnia is a little awkward. Once booted, you’re treated to a blank screen with a tab to the left. “Pull” on the tab and a row of icons appears. You may be able to intuit most of the icons – the little joystick for games, the FM dial for radio – and, furthermore, that you can push and pull yourself along the long column of icons.

Here is the strange part: To use an icon, you first must drag it off the column and onto the main screen (Double-tapping on an icon doesn’t automatically make it appear on the main screen and, when you do move it, the icon will sit at whatever awkward position you end up dropping it off instead of locking into a logical place.) Secondly, you have to figure out how to “use” the icon. The radio looks like a traditional multimedia face, with stop, play and other indicators. The world wide web? It is simply an icon that looks like a globe. You have to double tap that one.

The problems are compounded by the picky touch screen. The phone does a light rumble every time you touch the screen which, even though it gets old quick, at least you know you’re being heard. The phone’s collision detection seems a little off, though. It may take a couple drags for it to recognize that you want to pull an icon out. The biggest frustration by far was getting a simple double tap to be recognized. Any touchscreen recognition difficulties are unacceptable in this day and age. Ditto for the Omnia’s vertical to horizontal “flip,” which goes through an animation that makes the orientation change twice, if not three times as long as other phones. (We suspect the animation is meant to mask a longer loading time.)

Image Courtesy of Samsung

Testing Cont’d

The Samsung Omnia uses Windows Media 6.1, so Microsoft Outlook and other products are built in. They are on par with similar devices. Microsoft ActiveSync – a quick installation – will match your calendar, email and so on.

Less smooth is the “keyboard,” which actually uses an archaic multikey format. For example, going on the Internet to visit Yahoo! required tapping the virtual “w” key, then tapping on a series of likely letter combinations to find “ww,” again to find “www.,” and then starting the process over again to spell yahoo and the final com. It doesn’t help that the web seems to creep along – even on uber-popular sites like Yahoo! – unless you are in Wi-Fi range.

The multimedia visuals and speakers look and sound great – no weak screen and speakers here. Less impressive is the synchronization. To play your multimedia, you must find the search for files option under the menu and wait for the phone to find your goodies. It is a small detail, but the additional step makes absolutely no sense. Why not make it automatic, since there is no logical reason why someone would download multimedia from their computer onto the phone unless it was going to be used?

The 5.0-megapixel camera is as lush as it sounds. Though packed with icons, the camera setup is smooth and intuitive – you can go as deep as you like. Held horizontally, the options line either side of the screen while the middle gives a view of the action. Tap the touchpad and it takes a quick flick which can be trashed, emailed as an attachment or just saved. The only thing missing is a flash, but in most cases it seemed unnecessary.

Image Courtesy of Samsung

Conclusion

The Samsung Omnia would have been considered a fine, and perhaps even innovative phone circa 2006, but now even non-techie users expect more than a lackluster touchscreen or a non-intuitive menu setup. It would be different if the Omnia were significantly cheaper, but it’s not – and smartphone buyers have way better options for the same price or less.

Pros:

• Hi-res screen
• Lightweight smartphone
• Much multimedia

Cons:

• Clunky touchscreen
• Awkward keyboard
• Slow Internet if not using Wi-Fi

Reference: http://www.digitaltrends.com/cell-phone-reviews/samsung-omnia-sch-i910-review/

Nokia X6 Review

Nokia X6 review – the perfect mix of smartphone and music phone?

Nokia X6 Overview

The Nokia X6 is Nokia’s flagship music phone, and so comes with a huge range of features, an extremely responsive touchscreen, new user interface, and Nokia’s “Comes With Music” music download service, which lets you download unlimited tunes onto your phone.

And I do mean unlimited. A Comes With Music phone like the X6 gives you a year’s free subscription to the service, and during that year you can download as many tunes as you want from the millions available, store them on your phone or PC – and even keep them once the subscription ends.

Or, if you want to keep on using the Comes with Music service, you simply take out another subscription.

That’s a pretty good deal in its own right, particularly with the millions of tracks on offer and the 32GB of storage that the X6 has. But that’s not the half of it.

The X6 is the first in a new range of Nokia multimedia phones that effortlessly blend the best bits of high-end feature phones with the social connectivity and touchscreen goodness of the latest smartphones.

The Nokia X6 is, in other words, a cracking music phone with a glorious touchscreen interface, great social apps and high quality features such as a 5 megapixel camera.

And it’s here – now – at a new lower price!

Nokia X6 in more detail

Nokia’s original music phones, such as the old Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, were traditional phones, with keypads and buttons. They offered good sound quality and a good range of features, but were, well, just standard phones at heart.

2009, though, has seen a raft of smartphones with sexy touchscreens and superb user interfaces. The whole market has shifted away from wanting the best features towards wanting the best user experience.

So Nokia has adapted to these shifts in tastes and the X6 is the result, providing great features that Nokia phones have always had with a great touchscreen interface that the market now expects.

Nokia X6 Features

Nokia has done a great job with the X6. It’s got a great user interface and a tonne of cracking features, each of which has been designed to provide excellent results, and to trounce the competition. For example:

Brilliant widescreen display
Not only does the 3.2″ screen offer 16:9 widescreen viewing, it also uses capacitive touchscreen technology – which makes it super-responsive, responding to the lightest touch of your finger. The X6’s touchscreen is leagues ahead of the N97’s.

Throw in 16 million colours, and the 3.2″ screen is perfect for viewing pictures and video.

Music, maestro!

Perhaps most important is the X6’s superb music features. The X6 is Nokia’s flagship music phone, and so it really goes the extra mile to produce outstanding results, either from its stereo speakers, or its built-in 3.5mm standard headphone jack.

It’ll play music in MP3, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA format, and also comes with a built-in FM Radio if you get tired of the thousands of songs you’ve downloaded!

With thousands of tunes on board, and an unlimited number of tunes available for download, finding what you to listen to can be tricky. Nokia have thought of that, too, and provide a nifty app that lets you play your tunes according to what mood you’re feeling.

You can swipe a few sliders up or down to tell the X6 how happy, sad or energetic you’re feeling, and it’ll suggest a playlist based on your mood.

GPS and mapping features that go the extra mile
Many phones have GPS. The Nokia X6 goes one better and also adds a compass, as well as automatic photo geo-tagging and Ovi Maps. You can also use Google Maps if you’d prefer, and both now offer turn by turn Sat-Nav navigation.

Top-end camera that works in light and dark conditions
No crappy camera for the X6. Nokia have kitted it out with a 5 megapixel unit with Carl Zeiss optics and autofocus, and then thrown in a Dual LED flash as well, for superb low-light pic taking. You can also record video at 30 frames per second.

Desktop-like Web browsing with Flash
Nokia’s Web browser is based on Web kit, the same technology used in the iPhone and Android phones. As a result, you get a desktop-like Web browsing experience with the bonus of Flash videos, such as YouTube, being displayed within the Web browser itself. In other words, if you can view a Web site on a desktop, you can view it on the X6.

The X6’s browser has also been tweaked a bit, so you can now zoom into a Web page simply by double tapping the screen (triple tapping will zoom in even further).

Download hundreds of apps with Nokai’s Ovi Store
Although the X6 isn’t a smartphone, that doesn’t mean you can’t have apps – you can extend its features with hundreds of apps, all readily available from Nokia’s Ovi store. Whether it’s social network apps, picture, video or music apps, or a wealth of games, they’re all just a touch away.

Super-connected Email supports lets you sync with virtually anything
Most phones support email, but the X6 also offers built-in support for Yahoo! Mail, GMail, Windows Live Hotmail and virtually all standard desktop email services via POP3 and IMAP. In other words, the X6 will connect to virtually any email service you choose to use, and connect to it with the minimum of fuss.

Superb connectivity
As you’d expect from a Nokia feature phone, the X6 is packed with connectivity options, including Wi-Fi, HSDPA, TV-Out, and an FM radio.

Ridiculously large storage built-in
A music phone is no good if it can’t store many tunes. That’s why Nokia endowed the X6 with 32GB of storage, which is good for thousands of tunes, and a load of videos as well – which is good news, as with a 16:9 widescreen display, the screen is begging to show videos and films!

Gamers delight – Spore on the X6
Nokia see the X6 as a multimedia entertainment phone, and so have thrown in some pretty good graphics hardware and a variety of games to take advantage of it. Top of the list is EA’s Spore, one of the most eagerly awaited games of all time, which isn’t just available for the X6 – it actually comes ready loaded, ready for you to play it the instant you buy the phone.

You can also download hundreds of other games from Nokai’s Ovi Store.

Class leading battery for 35 hours of continuous music playing
Phones with this many features tend to drain their battery quickly. Not so the X6. Nokia have made the X6 super-efficient, giving you 35 hours of continuous music playing, 420 hours of standby time, and over 8 hours of talk time between charges.

That’s immense, and makes other phones look greedy in comparison!

Social networking for social butterflies

Nokia have seen how important social networking is to people these days, and so have included apps for the Nokia X6 that pull in your friends’ statuses and tweets,and show you them directly on the homescreen. Your Facebook friends’ pictures are also synchronized with your contacts, so you can see who’s calling at a glance.

You can also upload your own status to sites like like Facebook and Twitter directly from the homescreen, making the Nokia X6 perfect if you can’t live without your social network fix.

Reference: http://mobilementalism.com/2009/11/29/nokia-x6-review-the-perfect-mix-of-smartphone-and-music-phone/