Samsung Omnia II

Update 21/12/2009:

In light of the current state of the mobile phone market, the final score of the Samsung Omnia II has been reduced from four to three stars.

The Omnia II is Samsung's first phone to include the updated version 6.5 of Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS, now known as Windows Phone.  With plenty of quality multimedia hardware and exciting features, this handset should appeal to professionals and ordinary consumers alike, who should appreciate the new Windows Phone interface, which is billed as being faster, simpler and easier on the eye than its predecessors.  It's also more clearly designed for a touchscreen interface to woo the mass market, a tactic has already won Apple, RIM and phones using Google's Android plenty of fans.  After a week of using it every day, here's our verdict on this first example of a handset using Windows Phone. 


Bright, attractive display

Since the launch of its Player range of phones, Samsung's strategy seems to have been to produce mobiles that are immediately recognizable.  That means it's perfectly logical that its most recent phones all look alike, although that also leaves them lacking in originality.  The formula is always the same: glossy black plastic, a minimalist user interface and satisfactory construction.  The Omnia II is no exception, and could easily be mistaken for a larger version of the Player Jet.


The Omnia II has a gorgeous 3.7'' AMOLED display, which is much brighter and visible from a far wider range of angles than the standard screens found in competing handsets.  It's still the same old story if you're outside in bright sunlight: you can't see much, if anything at all.  It offers fewer colours than the smaller Jet, displaying a maximum of 65 000 in place of the earlier model's 16 million.  The end results are perfectly satisfactory though.

Just like other manufacturers, Samsung has opted for a touchscreen interface, but it still has three physical buttons.  One is for accepting calls, the other for rejecting them (and also turning the Omnia II off), while the third has two different functions.  If you press the middle button once, it takes you directly to the main menu, but pressing it and holding it down for a few seconds opens the task manager allowing you to switch from one application to another.

A simpler interface that runs more smoothly

If the new generation of Windows Phone mobiles are going to be judged on just on two factors, it's whether they offer a fluid interface and whether they're easy to use.  In case you need any reminding, Windows Mobile 6.1 was an absolute disaster.  Smartphones that used it regularly struggled to keep up.


Let's get straight to the point: the Omnia II is faster than a smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1.  This new vintage has its own collection of improvements, and is more polished and fluid--but it isn't the long-awaited major update, and it doesn't make this phone as easy to use as an iPhone.  Although it's far from perfect, this little facelift is still a significant improvement.

Although the system is far from perfect--when you switch it on (which takes around thirty seconds), the Omnia II hangs for up to twenty seconds, opening and closing various menus even if you don't touch it at all--it's impossible to deny the real progress that has been made.  Cynics might well say 'it's about time!' or 'it couldn't exactly get much worse', and both comments would be true.

The Windows Phone user interface is clearer and easier to control using your fingers, but that's another area where Microsoft was trailing a long way behind and could only get better.  The scrolling menus are all gone, but the Start button is still up there in the top left.  It's doubtlessly much easier to get the hang off if you're used to using Windows on a PC, but that does rather beg the question of whether trying to transpose the Windows desktop experience onto such a small screen is a good idea.  Some applications require plenty of patience, though, and you'll need to get used to a rather dated, if not just plain old-fashioned menus, and it's generally better to use Samsung's interface to avoid the endless contextual menus.

For several months now, manufacturers have been talking about how one of their aims with Windows Phone 6.5 is to target a much wider audience than the business users who have traditionally made up Windows Mobile's customers, and it's easy to see how this new version would be more attractive to the general public.  However, it's still a long away from being as user-friendly as the interface found on the HTC Sense or even the iPhone.


There are several different ways into the interface--too many, perhaps.  Samsung has included the Windows Phone interface alongside its own TouchWiz system, which allows you to personalise up to three different home screens with different widgets giving access to online content like YouTube, Facebook and Google Apps.  As a result, though, there are a lot of applications who functions are duplicated.


There are an incredible amount of options for personalizing the Omnia II.  As well the widgets mentioned above, you can change the background images for your different home screens using options provided by several designers and artists.  In the Windows Phone part of the interface, by clicking in the top left-hand corner of the screen, you can adjust the different icons to arrange them in your own order.



As well as the other two interfaces, Samsung has included a separate access to the phone's multimedia features like games, video, audio and photos.  To get to them, all you need to do is press the small cube--just like you do on phones from that other big Korean manufacturer, LG.  You can then spin a 3D cube on screen whose six faces represent different multimedia functions.  It works well, it's fun and it actually saves time compared to traditional menus.

Because social networks are all the rage, Microsoft has ensured there's direct access to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and its own Live Messenger IM service.

Reasonable multimedia capabilities

With such a big bright screen, surfing the web is a very pleasant experience.  We'd still recommend you use the Opera browser, pre-installed as an optional extra, rather than the default choice, Internet Explorer, which still lags behind in its ability to render websites.  Like other Windows Phone-based handsets, the Omnia II includes support for Flash Lite, to watch videos online, although they're not always entirely fluid as well as sites that rely on AJAX.  Both browsing and looking at photos are improved by the one finger zoom system: if you tap the screen and hold your finger down, you can zoom in by moving your finger up towards the plus sign  that appears, or zoom out again by sliding it down to the minus sign at the bottom.

IE

Opera

So you can enjoy as much content as possible on your mobile, the Omnia II has 2 GB of internal memory and comes with an 8 GB Micro SD card, which can be extended to 32 GB.

The camera included takes decent photos--for a phone that is.  The results are the same as those produced by the Player Jet.  There are plenty of advanced functions available, including image stabilization, face detection and filters, which can prove very useful if you often use your phone for taking photos.  The camera can also record video, and, although the quality is far from wonderful, it's good enough for shooting short clips.  Finally, DivX files are supported natively, so there's no need to convert them first.


The audio experience on the Omnia II is great, and your ears will enjoy a reasonable quality sound that's about average for a smartphone.  Of course, we'll add our usual recommendation to replace the headphones provided with your own, which you can do easily because the handset has a standard headphone jack.  As a bonus, there's a little app that works like Shazam: hold your phone up to the speakers and if it recognises the track that's playing, you can get the title and artist for the current song. There's also an FM tuner.


The Omnia II is no long-distance runner and loses its charge relatively quickly.  If you use it a lot, then it'll only just see out the day. 

Marketplace

The new way for mobile manufacturers to make money began with the arrival of the AppStore: the latest strategy involves building a money-making ecosystem around a product.  Over a year after Apple pioneered the concept, Microsoft now has its own version in the hope of evening out the competition.  The Omnia  II can connect directly to the Marketplace service and its currently rather paltry selection of apps.  In theory, though, users can download the apps they need and customize their phones to suit them.  Although the AppStore is very heavily aimed at games and entertainment, Marketplace currently seems more resolutely aligned towards more professional applications, perhaps as part of an attempt not to lose the loyalty of Windows Mobile's traditional users.

Like other phones running Windows Phone, the Omnia II includes access to Microsoft's My Phone service, which is free for the first 200 MB of data.  Like the MobileMe service offered by Apple, you can store your contacts, calendars and other information online, and then download them if your phone is lost or stolen.