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Introduction

There never seems a shortage of heroes in this industry but every now and then a new breed emerges to change the rules of engagement. Ranks and titles are hard earned and we’ve seen enough contenders that barely deserve a hero’s death. Now, here comes a gadget that knows the best shot at glory is the high-definition one. Will the Samsung Omnia HD be strong enough to bear its name with honor or will it crumble under the weight of expectations?

As all-in-one multimedia touchscreens are battling for dominance, the HD category is now making its way to cellphones. HD is a magical marketing word that has seen as many abuses as it has had just uses. In the Omnia HD case, it’s an insignia of its truly superior rank. It’s not the first time a handset has claimed this tempting acronym, but the Omnia HD hits it where it matters – video recording and playback.

Samsung were the first to announce and release an HD-video-enabled handset. In the not so short time since then, none of their major rivals managed to introduce a competitor. So, all heads are anxiously turned to Samsung to see if they can deliver.

Samsung i8910 Omnia HD official photos

By the way, the Omnia HD comes equipped with everything that Samsung can put on the table. HD video recording and playback is definitely top-notch stuff but these are just the fancy extras on a full battle suit. There’s also a huge AMOLED screen, powerful 600 MHz processor and dedicated graphics chip. The all-in-one count continues with an 8 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, generous 8/16 GB internal storage and DivX/XviD HD playback with subtitle support. Finally, the whole thing runs the latest Symbian S60 5th edition skinned with the new TouchWiz 3D interface.

Take the time to check out this genuine all-rounder.

Key features:

• 3.7-inch 16M-color capacitive AMOLED touchscreen, 640 x 360 pixels
• Symbian S60 5th edition with TouchWiz 3D UI
• ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz processor; HW Graphic Accelerator
• 256MB RAM
• 8 megapixel auto focus camera with LED flash, geotagging, face detection, smile shot, image stabilizer, Wide Dynamic Range (WDR), ISO 1600
• HD 720p@24fps, 720×480@30fps, QVGA time-lapse and slow-mo video recording
• Dual-band 3G with HSDPA (7.2Mbps) and HSUPA (5.76 Mbps) support
• Quad-band GSM support
• Wi-Fi with DLNA technology
• Built-in GPS with A-GPS functionality
• 8/16GB internal memory
• Hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
• TV out (Standard Definition content only)
• FM radio with RDS
• Bluetooth and USB v2.0
• 3.5mm standard audio jack
• DNSe audio technology
• DivX/XviD video support with subtitles (HD video playback)
• Virtual 5.1 channel Dolby surround (in headphones)
• Proximity sensor for screen auto turn-off
• Accelerometer sensor for automatic UI rotation, turn-to-mute and motion-based gaming
• Magnetometer for digital compass
• Office document viewer
• Full Flash support in the web browser

Main disadvantages:

• No xenon flash
• No camera lens cover
• Sluggish browsing in the image gallery
• HD video recording sometimes drops below 24fps or duplicates frames to equal 24
• Samsung Mobile Navigator doesn’t come with any maps or voice-guided navigation license
• No smart dialing
• Touch web browser zooming needs tweaking
• Somewhat limited 3rd party software availability
• No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)

Well, the Omnia HD is packed with all kinds of goodies, but not without a few setbacks on the way to retail. If the whole thing is put together right though, the i8910 Omnia HD may have every reason to claim its rightful place on the throne as the unchallenged king of HD video.

Some of you must be wondering what took us so long to get an Omnia HD for a proper in-depth review as it’s been around for a while. Well, it’s true and it’s not. Samsung i8910 Omnia HD was released in the end of May through selected carriers but shortly after that Samsung froze production and stopped supplies, reportedly due to software problems. Now, the official release has been announced and the Omnia HD is available worldwide, all bugs fixed…though let us be the judge of that. But anyway, the i8910 Omnia HD is ready to roll.

This is our third and last meeting with the handset and we’re still excited about exploring an industry leading device. The verdict of course is a few pages away, but a device that ticks off the wishlist of high-end features and marries Symbian and TouchWiz is certainly worth a closer look.

Samsung Omnia HD in our office

We hope you’re as keen to join as the Omnia HD is eager to shoot those high-res videos. But first things first, let’s take a look at the design and handling after the jump.

Source: GSMArena.com

Unboxing the Omnia HD

The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is a high-end multimedia handset, but comes with an fairly standard package. There is the mandatory charger, microUSB cable and a 3.5mm headset. The headset microphone is quite close to the left headphone (like the Apple iPhone headset), but a separate remote (and quite a big one) is found in the middle of the cable. Unfortunately, you cannot control music playback with it.

The only extra thing you get with the Omnia HD is a TV cable, the same 3.5mm one which comes with the Nokia N-series. That said, it’s probably the first time e see a TV-out cable in a Samsung retail package, but hey, we usually deal with prototypes.

Unboxing Omnia HD

The TV-out cable supplied cannot transfer HD content it’s really a regular RCA cable that’s probably at the bottom end when it comes to transferring digital media, but is quite compact and you can hook up to every TV set out there.

Samsung i8910 Omnia HD 360-degree spin

The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is hardly the most compact phone around. In fact the first impression it leaves is of an abnormally wide handset with its 123 x 59 mm. At 12.9mm thickness, it can almost be called slim but it’s by no means light. If that’s the price to pay for this kind of functionality, we guess most people would be willing to make the compromise.

Design and construction

Designing a fully touch-operated mobile phone certainly doesn’t leave too much freedom in the aesthetics department and all of them look more or less identical. The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD doesn’t depart from the standard looks, the metallic frame around the display obviously an attempt to give it a face of its own, but the glossy plastic around the display looks rather cheap.

Most of the front panel is taken up by Omnia HD’s key feature – the 3.7″ 16M-color AMOLED touchscreen enclosed in a glossy metallic frame. The handset uses the capacitive touchscreen technology as opposed to the resistive screen of the first S60 5th edition handset, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The screen is quite sensitive and we’re quite pleased with it in that respect.

3.7″ widescreen AMOLED display

The capacitive technology used guarantees the excellent responsiveness of the screen at the expense of only being able to use your fingers – no stylus, no plectrum, no anything… Still, there are some capacitive screen styluses ot there that are said to do the job, but we haven’t tried them ourselves.

The display of the Samsung i8910 offers amazing picture quality. The resolution of 360 x 640 pixels (the same as the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia N97) is not exactly top-of-the-line but the AMOLED technology does make a difference. The contrast and colors are really impressive and they give a real sharpness to images.

The bad news about the display of Samsung i8910 is that its legibility drops dramatically under direct sunlight. The Omnia HD screen is better by the recent crop of Samsung phones, but still remains inferior to the Apple iPhone displays, for example.

The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD display offers haptic feedback, which makes the touchscreen a passable replacement for a hardware keypad.

The other noteworthy elements at the face of the Samsung i8910 are the video-call camera and the proximity sensor at the top, plus the three hardware keys at the bottom. The proximity sensor is used for locking the display during calls to avoid accidental presses when holding the phone next to your cheek.

A couple of sensors and a video-call camera at the top

The Omnia HD has hardware Call and End keys plus a menu key, much like the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. They are made of plastic (just like the silvery frame around the display). The End key doubles as a power button.

The three keys at the bottom are large enough

On the left side we find the volume rocker, which is adequately sized and quite easy to work with. Next to it is the microSD card slot, which is hot-swap enabled. But of course you’ll hardly need it because of the 8/16 GB inbuilt storage.

Omnia HD is said to support microSD cards of up to 16GB, and this was as far as went testing it. The handset handled a full 16GB microSD card problem-free. We were pleased with the reading/writing speed and the initialization of the full microSD card was very fast.

Omnia HD left side: volume rocker, microSD card slot and lanyard eyelet

The right side of the Samsung i8910 hosts the Hold key (to lock/unlock the touchscreen), the camera key and the microUSB port. It’s a welcome benefit that the phone charges off the microUSB port so you can transfer data and charge your battery simultaneously.

A couple of keys and a microUSB port on the right

At the top of the Samsung i8910 we find a loudspeaker and the 3.5mm standard audio jack. Much like the USB port, the audio jack is hidden under a small lid to keep dust away. The first loudspeaker occupies the center.

One of the loudspeakers is placed right next to the 3.5mm audio jack

The second loudspeaker is located at the bottom (dead center, again), along with the mouthpiece. This layout seems a respectful nod to the Omnia HD’s exceptional video skill, around which everything seems to revolve.

Loudspeakers are perfectly placed for watching videos in landscape mode

The Omnia HD’s rear is all glossy plastic, turning it into a fingerprint nightmare. The battery cover fits firmly into place and there is no creaking when trying to open it.

Along with the Samsung logo, the back side of the Omnia HD also hosts the 8 megapixel camera lens and the LED flash. With video recording so high on the agenda, it’s quite understandable why they went for LED rather than xenon technology. Still the Samsung Pixon12 offers both to cater for stills and video alike.

The battery cover of Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is a fingerprint nightmare

But the sun will shine even on the rear of the Omnia HD and in our case it’s the great 1500 mAh battery found under a cheapo plastic battery cover. Given the AMOLED screen with its low power consumption, the Omnia HD should count on above average battery life. After all, that’s crucial for a multimedia device.

Update:

We’ve managed to clock the Omnia HD battery life in the few days following the publishing of the review and just as expected, it turned out quite a performer. The Omnia HD battery went from full to flat in 72 hours. During those 72 hours we used the handset in a somewhat “normal usage” pattern that included all of the following: 250 min of mp3 playback, 60 min video playback of SD content, 50 min of talking and finally, 40 min of mobile web browsing over 3G. We think, that you would agree that despite the huge screen, battery performance is among the virtues of Samsung Omnia HD. 

The 1500 mAh battery should provide better cover for the power hog of a screen

The general build quality of the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD now is lower than expected. The huge AMOLED display is true high end stuff but the plastic bits (especially the battery cover) are below par. The hardware and design changes are a mixed bag really but we guess the multimedia performance will make up for it big time.

Finally, we should again point out that the huge screen real estate calls for some extraordinary body dimensions as well. The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is easily among the largest handsets on the market, even though it’s reasonably slim. Comfortable single-handed operation will definitely be an issue for some users – so a try-before-you-buy is advisable.

The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is on the borderline of smooth single-handed use
Source: GSMArena.com

TouchWiz’d Symbian OS

The i8910 Omnia HD is Samsung’s first Symbian S60 5th edition-powered touchscreen device. However if you expect its software to be an exact copy of either the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic or the N97 you are going to be very surprised.

At first sight you might not even recognize the Symbian OS under the cheerful TouchWiz UI that’s running on top of it. The customization only stretches to the homescreen and the menu icons but that’s almost enough to give the i8910 Omnia HD the user friendliness of a typical Samsung feature phone.

The default homescreen layout is the TouchWiz one, where you get to fill your homescreen with as many widgets as you like. Those are small programs, shortcuts or just reminders that give you quick access to some of the features of the handset or provide some specific info. Widgets are getting more and more popular and the reason is quite understandable – some of the most frequently used features and services are just a tap away on the homescreen. You can hide those widgets you use least (or don’t use at all), as well as download new ones.

The TouchWiz’d Symbian OS

In fact, you can arrange three completely different homescreens full of widgets. Switching between them is handled by the three small shortcuts at the top right corner, which become active one you slide out the widgets bar.

If you aren’t a great fan of the TouchWiz widgetry there are two more options for the homescreen layout (found under homescreen themes in the menu) – Finger use and Basic.

Finger use is identical to the one found on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. It offers a set of four large and easily thumbable shortcuts that lead to selected applications. The basic theme on the other hand leaves your homescreen completely empty with only the four standard buttons displayed at the bottom – Telephone, Contacts, Messaging and Menu.

The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD also features a nice transition effect between the homescreen, the main menu and the photo contacts app. Those three interchange upon a finger sweep with a transition effect resembling the inner walls of a cube. If you don’t care for transition effects, and you are looking for a bit of extra speed, you can switch that off.

A sweep to the right will take you to the Photo Contacts feature, which is quite neat. It allows you to assign a whole image, or even a cropped part of it, to entries in the phonebook. Sweeping a finger to the left of the widgets screen, opens up the main menu.

Beneath the colorful outfit of the Omnia HD lays the Symbian S60 5th Edition. Quickly maturing it might be, but it is still far from perfect. We have already discussed the inconsistency it has with scrolling (which goes in the way of your finger through a scrollbar in the menus and in the exact opposite direction with some applications).

There’s similar unpredictability when selecting items too. You would normally need a single tap in grid menus and two taps in list menus. While we admit that you might eventually get used to all this, we definitely find those to be major problems with the usability of the S60 5th edition. That randomness causes quite a lot of confusion and is nowhere near the fluent and intuitive interface that the market currently demands.

Most menus of the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD can be displayed as either a grid or a list. The menu organization is pretty intuitive and logical, most items located exactly where you would expect them to be. The two virtual soft keys ensure making your way around won’t be any different than on a regular S60 phone.

The menus can appear as grids or lists

The accelerometer automatically rotates the display of the Omnia HD but it doesn’t work through the menus. Auto-rotation is fairly smooth with a decent fade out effect.

While there is some lag at times (most notably in the gallery – more on that later) the overall performance of the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is remarkable. The 600 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU and the dedicated graphic chip do a fine job indeed powering that massive screen and the results are very pleasing.

The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD has 256MB of RAM – exactly twice as much as the Nokia N97. Now add the snappier CPU and you’ll understand where the better overall performance comes from even with the added weight of the TouchWiz running on top of the Symbian OS.

Pretty good phonebook

Typical for Symbian, the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD comes with a phonebook that can store an unlimited number of entries, each holding as many fields as the users sees fit. You can assign a photo to each contact, or even a video if you wish. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

The phonebook is typical Symbian

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any of the names. You can also set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.

Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one.

Editing a contact

The Call log keeps track of your recent communications. The application itself comes in two flavors – accessed by pressing the Call key on the stand-by screen or from the main menu. The first one brings 20 call records in each of its tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls.

If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers (even WLAN connections are included).

Photo contacts a swipe away

As we already mentioned the Omnia HD comes complete with the Photo contacts app, which is an interestingly looking alternative to the phonebook. While it still relies on the regular contact database, the Photo contacts application might save you the effort of ever entering the phonebook again once you’ve filled it up.

Photo contacts

The app itself allows you to tag parts of photos, which can then be used as shortcuts to various contacts. That might be pretty handy if you are into grouping your contacts. You can take a photo of your colleagues and another one of your buddies and than tag each face to its respective phonebook entry. Then you are one photo away from calling everyone in for a poker night at your place.

Photo contacts might not be the most practical application, but it is certainly one of the funniest ways to dial a number.

Source: GSMArena.com