Samsung Omnia II (I8000) | Review | Specs | Price

Samsung Omnia II

Samsung I8000 Omnia II is a stylish, all in one smartphone powered by Windows Mobile 6.1. The I8000 Omnia II comes with an integrated 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash, 800 MHz CPU, and a huge 3.7 AMOLED screen and 8/16 GB of internal storage. The connectivity includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth with A2DP, standard microUSB port, standard 3.5mm audio jack, GPS receiver with A-GPS. The Omnia II has several advantages, not the least of which is the amazing 3.7" AMOLED WVGA display. For the acronym-allergic - WVGA means 480 x 800 pixels resolution, which several years ago might have been considered acceptable for a computer monitor. That resolution is not so uncommon today, the exciting part here is "AMOLED" - active matrix organic LED. Or in plain English - brilliant picture quality.

Verdict

Pros:	Great Hardware Under the Hood,Abundant amount of available Onboard Memory,Supports Popular Media Playback.
Cons:	No xenon flash ,65K color limitation
Outline	The Omnia II presents great value-for-money compared with most other touchscreen smartphones available now.

Samsung Omnia II Specs:-

2GNetwork---------->GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3GNetwork---------->HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100

Available------------>Released 2009, June

CPU------------------>Samsung S3C6410 800MHz processor

OS------------------->Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Upgradable to 6.5 Professional

Dimensions-------->118 x 59.6 x 11.9 mm

Weight-------------->129 g
Display-------------->AMOLED resistive touchscreen, 65K colors

Size----------------->480 x 800 pixels, 3.7 inches

Internal------------->2/8/16 GB storage, 256 MB RAM

Cardslot------------->microSD (TransFlash), up to 32GB,
WLAN-------------->Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, DLNA
Java---------------->Yes, MIDP 2.0

Camera------------->5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash

Secondary---------->VGA videocall camera

Video--------------->Yes, 720x480@30fps
Bluetooth----------->Yes, v2.0
Infraredport-------->No
AudioJack---------->3.5 mm audio jack
USB---------------->microUSB v2.0
Battery------------->Li-Po 1500 mAh

Stand-by----------->Up to 430 h (2G) / Up to 430 h (3G)

Talktime----------->Up to 10 h (2G) / Up to 10 h (3G)

Price --------------->625 USD approx

29000 INR approx

Samsung Omnia II Review

The chunkier 118 x 60 x 11.9mm dimensions also mean there's more space for the screen. The large 3.7-inch WVGA (800 x 480) AMOLED display on the Omnia II makes it among the largest in this class of Windows Mobile products without keypads. For comparison, the HTC Touch HD comes with a marginally larger 3.8-inch TFT LCD of the same resolution. Like many other Samsung phones, this screen is top-notch and displays details and colors vividly.
The Omnia II's touchscreen is of the resistive variety, not the more fingertip-friendly capacitive kind. This means it requires a pinpoint touch using a stylus, which is provided in the package as a separate lanyard. While we understand that the lack of a stylus slot on the device makes the design cleaner, the alternative of having a mascara-like pointer hanging from the phone can be annoying for many.
Below the screen, you'll find a hexagonal button which resembles a 3D cube from certain angles. Other keys on the sides include volume controls on the left and keylock, back and camera shortcuts on the right. The top is where you'll see a 3.5mm audio jack and a micro-USB port.

For storage, 8GB of memory reside on the device with the option to expand that using a microSDHC slot which supports up to 32GB cards. This is good news for those who use their mobile phones as media players, even better when you consider the standard audio jack which lets you plug in your favorite third-party headphones.

To hide the dated Windows Mobile interface, Samsung employed its TouchWiz 2.0 UI. The Home screen is a blank slate on which you can customize by adding widgets. These include items such as a clock, calendar and onscreen shortcuts to items like Wi-Fi toggle. Many of these widgets are shortcuts to social-networking sites and perform the task of only launching the browser and pointing it to the intended page. As mentioned in other Samsung mobile phone reviews, the selection of widgets is limited to what's released by the company. There is limited third-party support for this, so don't expect to see a flood of useful widgets from developers anytime soon.
The TouchWiz UI has also been applied throughout the interface including the main menu and settings. Instead of the standard Programs page, you get a four-page menu, each of which can display 12 icons. Each page has its own title such as Productivity and Multimedia. These pages and their corresponding titles can be customized to your liking. New applications installed are filed under Others, which will be where your icons sit if you fill up the 48 spaces in the main menu. (Update: As pointed out by user baracuda89, it is possible to increase the number of main menu pages to accomodate up to 120 icons. New installations will still sit in the Others page, which acts as a holding area for apps yet to be categorized.)The settings pages have also been completely re-skinned to resemble a standard Samsung mobile phone. Most of the common settings can be configured without defaulting to the standard Windows Mobile interface, but there are still a few advanced settings such as the Connections page which bring you back to the Windows Mobile 6.1 UI.
One function we found particularly useful was the Task Switcher. This page can be brought up from anywhere by pressing and holding the Cube button. It lists the applications that are active and lets you move between them or close them completely. This is displayed in either a fancy rotating interface or a simple grid format. We preferred the latter as it was more responsive.
The TouchWiz interface doesn't feel overdone, but it can slow down in certain areas. Turning on the screen, for example, brings up a large clock and vital information such as time, network quality, notifications and instructions on how to unlock the device. This takes about 2 seconds to appear upon pressing the keylock button. It may seem like a short time, but can be annoying when the phone is used as your main time-telling device.

One thing we didn't like was the loss of threaded SMS. Yes, Samsung actually stripped out a useful, standard Windows Mobile 6.1 feature in trying to make things consistent with its TouchWiz UI.

The Settings menu has also been reworked completely. Categories are arranged in list view with text instead of the traditional icon grid layout. This makes fingering through them much easier. Toggling between options is done by touching an onscreen button, a welcome difference from the toggle switches of TouchFLO and Mobile OSX. It is abundantly clear that Samsung put a lot of time into taking any traces of Windows Mobile out of these new Omnias.
When we said that the Start button was the only thing that gave away this being a Windows Mobile device we told a white lie. Despite the beefed up processing power the spinning WinMo beach ball still pops up at times and this is most noticeable on the homescreen. Within the menus we rarely saw it, but flicking from homepage to homepage produces a 5-10 second delay while waiting for the widgets to load, which is infuriating. The widgets are a great idea, and some of them (like AccuWeather and Google) are very helpful, but it’s just not quick enough. Furthermore, we often found ourselves pressing options two and three times to activate them and not being able to drag widgets around unless they were pressed just right. This problem was only in the homescreen (here we really missed HTC’s TouchFLO 3D), throughout the rest of the phone it was very responsive and accurate.

Even with its large and bright screen, battery life was surprisingly good for the I8000. It lasted about two days on a single charge of its 1,500mAh battery. One battery-saving feature it possesses is auto brightness which conserves the charge by lowering the backlight in darker locations. This is a common smartphone feature, but we found the Omnia II's sensor a little too sensitive and a slight tilt of the device in the hands would cause the backlight to adjust. This can be annoying when reading text onscreen.
Voice quality was good for regular calls and we had no issues with reception. The front camera provided a good image to the other party during video calls but the person receiving the call pointed out that our voice sounded muffled during the conference.
The Omnia II contains an 800MHz Samsung processor and 256MB of RAM. It was responsive for the most part, though as mentioned earlier, certain parts of the interface slowed down at times. The device currently ships with Windows Mobile 6.1, but that can be upgraded to 6.5 when Microsoft releases the update.

The Samsung I8000 OmniaII is certainly a device that is hard to match, let alone beat and that much is clear with just a cursory glance at its specs. It also carries the aura of a new OS version pioneer, which in itself is enough to generate excitement. But that can hardly be a selling point as all recent HTC devices have also been promised free Windows Mobile 6.5 updates one the things gets out.

The thing that caught our attention the most is that the handset has the performance to cash all the checks that its specs are writing for. Virtually every part of the once sluggish and boring looking Windows Mobile interface has been overhauled: it is now pleasantly designed, fluid and responsive to such a degree that it might rival most of the other touch-centric platforms out there.

Samsung Omnia II Video Review

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