Review of Samsung's i900 Omnia multimedia powerhouse

Samsung SGH-i900 Omnia

Samsung SGH-i900 Omnia

Samsung SGH-i900 Omnia

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.