Samsung Omnia, the most iPhone-esque WM phone yet?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 11 November 2008 06:24

IT Industry - Market

While HTC’s Touch range has worked hard to bring iPhone like gestures and graphics to the Windows Mobile platform, Samsung’s Omnia is far more ambitious, comes with a much higher feature spec, and thanks to Windows is much more open.

Windows Media 6.1 is Microsoft’s latest mobile operating system, and while it’s unsurprisingly very Windows-like in operation and user interface, companies such as HTC and Samsung have gone to enormous lengths to hide and simplify as much of the WM interface as possible.

By and large they have done a tremendous job, with the only “rough edges” being Windows Mobile (WM) itself, although not only would WM users be well used to the way WM works, WM isn’t “bad” as such, just not as sexy or smooth as the iPhone, something Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface goes an enormous way to making up for and “hiding”.

There are “pure” Windows Mobile phones out there still, such as the i-mate Ultimate series, which employs no additional shell whatsoever, preserving the original WM experience, although software such as the excellent SPB Mobile Shell can be loaded at will to deliver some of the iPhone look and feel.

But phones such as the HTC Touch and the Samsung Omnia go a step further than the SPB Mobile Shell, with Samsung going well beyond even what HTC has done to really put its own stamp on its phones and the Windows Mobile experience.

Now, we do know that Microsoft has Windows Mobile 6.5 on the way, and Windows Mobile 7 due after that, and a big question will be whether existing devices can be freely and easily upgraded to these newer versions of the WM operating system.

In one way, it doesn’t matter too much because many people are on a plan of some kind and simply upgrade to the newest model whether through some kind of loyalty plan or at an additional monthly cost, but if our troubled economic times continue, people may wish to take advantage of their existing phones for a lot longer.

This is where Samsung’s Omnia shines, offering features that the iPhone won’t see until 2009, if Steve Jobs brings these features to the iPhone as long predicted.

Samsung Electronics Australia, Mobile Marketing Manager, Jenny Goodridge, explained: “The Samsung OMNIA will give users everything they could possibly want from their mobile phone. Boasting a comprehensive feature set, the Samsung OMNIA offers users the capacity to combine high performance business content with top of the range style and a lively multimedia experience.

But those specific features the iPhone doesn’t have? This includes a 5 megapixel camera with advanced features such as auto-focus, panoramic shot, face and smile detection functions, a video camera mode that takes 640x480 video clips, a microSD card socket for memory expansion up to 32GB, although only 16GB microSD cards are the largest currently available, Bluetooth that isn’t crippled (for stereo headsets, Bluetooth keyboards, wireless file transfer and more).



There’ s also a WM software library that also contains thousands of applications, a screen that works with fingertip, fingernail or stylus, haptic feedback, native horizontal keyboards, FM radio, video call camera and capability, a video player with multi-codec support that far outdoes the more limited set of codecs the iPhone supports, MMS message capability and more.

So, what else is in the Samsung Omnia (for there is more!), what does it cost and where can you get it from? Please read on to page 2.