Samsung Omnia i900 Review

The Samsung Omnia i900 is the latest Windows Mobile smartphone from Samsung and is touted to be its answer to the HTC Touch Diamond and Apple iPhone 3G. It has great features, looks cool and sexy and is a worthy contender to become the king of smartphones. It is packed with features like a 5 MP camera, 8 GB / 16 GB internal memory, Multi Touch, 3G, A-GPS, Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional etc. In this comprehensive and detailed review we try to cover all of its features, its strengths and shortcomings and whether it does manage to defeat the iPhone 3G and HTC Touch Diamond.

Samsung Omnia i900 Specifications

• Dimensions: 112 x 56.9 x 12.5 mm
• Weight: 127 gms
• Display: 240 x 400 px, 3.2“ TFT, 65K Colors
• Camera: 5 MP Cam with AF and Flash, VGA cam for video calls
• Chipset: 624MHz Marvell PXA312 CPU
• Memory: 8 GB / 16 GB Internal memory, 128 MB RAM, 256 MB ROM
• Connectivity: GPRS Class 12, EDGE Class 12, 3G HSDPA 7.2 MBPS, WLAN 802.11 b/g, USB v2.0
• Bluetooth: Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
• GPS: GPS Receiver with A-GPS
• OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional

Other Features: FM Radio with RDS, Geotagging, Built in Accelerometer for automatic screen rotation, 3.5 mm audio jack, TouchWiz UI, Optical Joystick.

Design & Display

At 112 x 56.9 x 12.5 mm, the Samsung Omnia i900 is more on the bulkier side. It weighs about 127 gms which isnt very heavy, considering the features it packs in that relatively small body. Its design is strikingly similar to the LG Viewty KU990. It sports a very clean design with completely smooth surfaces and a brushed finish at the back. The front of the phone sports the big display, the earpiece, a secondary VGA camera for video calls and an ambient light sensor. It also has the Call and End keys at the bottom with the Optical Joystick. The left side is pretty empty with just the USB 2.0 port. On the right are the volume rocker, camera key and a key that launches the Menu. On the bottom is the mouthpiece while the top houses the Power key and a reset hole. The back of the phone sports a brushed metallic finish and has the 5 MP Camera and the LED flash. All in all, The Samsung Omnia i900 is a sturdy phone with good build quality and a simple design. It should easily withstand a drop or two.

It has a huge 3.2″ display supporting resolutions of 240 x 400 px and 65K colors which is second in size only to the Apple iPhone 3G. However the resolution is quite odd and does cause some incompatibility problems with some applications and games. It is great for watching widescreen videos though. The display is good and bright but its very difficult to read under direct sunlight.

Operating System & Interface Features

The Samsung Omnia i900 is powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. It has a new custom made user Interface by Samsung called the TouchWiz which seems to be slightly inspired by HTC’s TouchFLO 3D. The display is Touch enabled and doesnt have a stylus slot. It has very few keys – The Optical Joystick, Call, End, Menu and Camera keys. They Optical Joystick can be used in two modes – as a normal touchpad and to navigate using a virtual mouse pointer. The mouse pointer is a refreshingly new concept and is fun to use and navigate around the phone. The Omnia i900′s display automatically rotates using the Accelerometer when tilted sideways. The screen is nice and sensitive and it has nice animated transitions. It also introduces haptic feedback when you press keys by vibrating for a very small period.

The new TouchWiz UI is good to use and is very fast and responsive, thanks to the 624 MHZ Marvell PXA312 CPU underneath its hood. The OS is fast and very rarely do you feel any lag. It has 128 MB ram which is enough for most applications and aids in multi tasking. It performs slightly better than the HTC Touch Diamond in most cases. However the TouchWiz UI is not as polished as the TouchFLO 3D. The Omnia i900 comes with 4 GB / 8GB internal flash memory which can be expanded by 8 GB using a Micro SD slot. The Omnia’s Touch Wiz UI also supports widgets like Notes, Explorer, Radio, Calendar and Clock. It has 3 different home screens. Underneath the flashy new UI and homescreens the good old and powerful Windows Mobile 6.1. It supports the huge library of Windows Mobile applications and games which propels it way ahead of the iPhone 3G.

It comes with a touch optimized version of Opera Mobile 9.5 powered by the Presto engine which is way better than the default Internet Explorer. It offers a fantastic, fullscreen browsing experience with browser controls available at a tap. There is absolutely no lag in page rendering and zooming. The browser switches to landscape mode automatically when held horizontally. It is very similar to Mobile Safari and even betters it in some aspects. The browser supports FlashLite 2.1.

The Omnia i900 comes with the full Office suite – Word, Excel and Powerpoint. there is also an application to view PDF files. It also comes with the regular Phonebook, Organiser and ToDo list apps.

Multimedia

The Samsung Omnia i900 is a complete beast when it comes to multimedia performance. It has a 5 MP cam which is fully loaded with autofocus, face recognition, smile detection, a digital image stabilizer and supports a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. It also supports GeoTagging and has a LED flash. The camera is top notch – a first on Windows Mobile smartphones and supports a plethora of advanced settings – self-timer, white balance, color effect, ISO settings and various modes including the smile detection mode. It produces crisp and natural images with accurate color reproduction. It records VGA video (640 x 480) at 15fps and QVGA video (320 x 240) at 30fps. It sports a new camera interface which is quite nice.

The Omnia i900 features the all new Samsung Omnia Media Album and the Samsung Touch Player for image viewing and audio / video playback respectively. It has awesome sound quality which matches that of the iPhone 3G. It has low distortion levels and a good frequency response and dynamic range. It is undoubtedly the best PMP in the Windows Mobile range. It supports DivX playback out of the box and is ideal for playing widescreen video. It supports almost all video formats due to the availability of many 3rd party applications to play video content. It also has an FM Radio with RDS support and a cool new touch optimized interface to go with it.

Connectivity

The Samsung Omnia i900 is a quad band phone supporting a wide range of connectivity options like GPRS, EDGE, 3G HSDPA 7.2 MBPS, WLAN 802.11 b/g, USB v2.0. It also comes with an A-GPS receiver with Google Maps bundled and can easily double up as a hand held standalone navigation unit.

Phone Performance

The Omnia i900 has good reception quality and performs decently well even in low network areas.
Battery: The Samsung Omnia is powered by a very powerful 1440 mAh Li-ion battery. It provides a talktime of about 6 hours and easily lasts about 3 days with moderate usage. Also the battery life is boosted by its very efficient Marvell PXA312 processor.

Pros

• Excellent Battery
• TouchWiz UI
• Haptic Feedback
• Great Audio / Video Playback

Cons

• No Stylus slot
• No Hot swapping
• Poor readability under direct sunlight
• Odd resolution

Final Conclusions

The Samsung Omnia i900 is a great phone which is fully packed with features. It is the best Windows Mobile phone in terms of multimedia capabilities. It is a strong competitor and is better than the iPhone 3G and HTC Touch Diamond in some respects but also loses in some. The list of Pros far outweigh the Cons. It is definitely a great buy despite all its shortcomings.

Our Rating: 4/5