The look:
The press release says it is the most innovative phone in the market, yet the Samsung Omnia looks and feels awfully similar to Apple’s iPhone. This slim touch-screen device is a tad heavier and still sports a stylus (that doubles as a keychain) rather than leaving the touch action to your fingers.
The features:
The Omnia literally brings your Windows desktop to your phone—and that’s not a good thing. Think of the Vista Sidebar but on the Omnia. It acts as place for you to pin your favorite programs for easy access but to activate them you have to drag the icon to the desktop and then press the icon. Kudos to Samsung for the idea but it ends up being obsolete as you can just press “Main Menu” to find the applications. And what’s the point of having 480x272 resolution when the sidebar takes up one-third of the space for no reason? Despite this, it is packed with some decent features including GPS with turn-by-turn map, an Office suites just in case you want to try to do some work, and an impressive 5-megapixel camera, sharper than most of the PDAs in the market.
The performance:
Since it runs on Windows Mobile operating system, you can expect a lag and unresponsiveness to commands. Navigation in general is also a little clunky and we would definitely like to improve the keyboard. It still sports molecule-sized keys making it hard to finger type.
The verdict:
Since last year’s release of the iPhone, other mobile companies have been desperately trying to match it. No one has yet come close and the Samsung Omnia doesn’t either. Even if we’re not comparing it to the iPhone, there are much better Pocket PCs out there that can do pretty much the same thing for a much cheaper price tag.
B25,000.
At Samsung Mobile,
4/F Siam Paragon, 02-610-9713/4.
