Samsung Omnia (Verizon Wireless)

Calls and speakerphone: For the most part, we found calls loud and clear on the Samsung Omnia. We rarely used the side volume keys to adjust the sound up or down. Callers said we sounded loud and clear. Using the speakerphone didn’t seem to degrade call quality on our end and we appreciate how easy it is to activate the speakerphone. Additionally, you don’t have to be too close to the cell phone when using the speakerphone to be heard by callers – a definite plus.

Audio quality: Playback of songs through the cell phone’s speakers could be better. We found that songs sounded tinny – more so than on other cell phones we’ve tested. Although the speaker is on the back of the Samsung cell phone turning it face down during music playback doesn’t really help. Although the Samsung Omnia has a proprietary headset jack it does come with an adapter for 3.5mm headsets so you can use your own headset with the Omnia. The cell phone’s charger and the headset jack share the same proprietary port. Additionally, you’ll need to use that or the included headset to be able to access the FM radio. We found audio quality did improve through our own speakers as well as those included.

Menu/phone book: As is the trend with the latest batch of Windows Mobile smartphones of creating an overlay over the Windows OS to ease navigation and offer more pesonalization, it’s not immediately obvious that the Samsung Omnia is indeed a smartphone. In this case, the Samsung Omnia’s menu system is similar to the Samsung Behold. In a straight line going down the edge of the left hand side of the screen are a series of icons. You can, of course, swipe your finger up and down the line to scroll through the icons. The icons correspond to an application on the Samsung cell phone and tapping on one of the icons will launch that application. If you hold and drag that icon onto the remaining screen area you’ll get a mini version of the app on the screen, which you can then position anywhere on the screen. For example, if you select music, a mini-player will appear on the screen that you can use to play, stop/pause, and skip to other songs. Additionally, stationed at the bottom of the screen are one touch access to the Phone and Main Menu, while in the top left-hand corner of the screen is the ever-familiar Windows logo so if you’re use to the Windows Mobile menu system it is easy enough to access.

The Samsung Omnia runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. It comes with mobile editions of Excel, One Note, PowerPoint, and Word. You can also create and receive RSS feeds and there are two mobile web browser options: Internet Explorer and Opera. In case you’re feeling disconnected from your desktop, just launch the Remote Desktop application. In short, there’s plenty here to keep you entertained and well connected.

Messaging: The Samsung Omnia handles POP3 and IMAP 4 e-mail accounts as well as Web mail accounts (AOL, Yahoo, Gmail) with ease. You can set the Omnia to check for messages at specific intervals, or you can check them manually at any time. For corporate users, the Omnia also includes Microsoft’s Direct Push Technology for real-time e-mail delivery and automatic synchronization with your Outlook calendar, tasks, and contacts via Exchange Server. Although instant messaging isn’t set up out-of-the-box, you can get a free download that installs AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and Windows Live Messenger. You can also send a text message to a landline .

Camera/video: The Samsung Omnia sports a 5-megapixel camera that can take photos and record short videos. It has a flash, but lacks a tiny mirror near the lens for snapping self-portraits. Pressing the dedicated camera key on the Omnia’s spine launches a slideshow viewer so you can see pictures. If you want to take photos, you’ll need to press and hold the camera key again until the application launches. You can snap a picture by pressing the dedicated camera button, however, you do need to hold it down until the picture is captured or you might miss your shot. Since the Samsung Omnia does come with a 5-megapixel digital camera it does have its fair share of more advanced features that are typically found on a digital camera, such as white balance, auto focus and face detection, ISO settings, exposure meter (spot, matrix, and center-weighted), effects (normal, negative, water color, black and white, sepia and more), saturation, sharpness, and even anti-shake. There is also a slue of automatic settings as well for specific situations (party, beach, dusk, landscape, portrait, sunset, etc.) If you don’t know what any of those terms mean, no worries; once you select one a definition should appear across the bottom of the screen.

About taking pictures, the shutter is acceptable once you figure out how to actually capture a picture. That said, it’s not the fastest shutter we’ve seen on a camera phone – nor is it the slowest. As expected, the entire screen turns into a viewfinder (similar to digital cameras), so it seems like you have more room to frame your photo. Additionally, once you take a picture there are a few things you can do with it such as sharing it, uploading it to an online album, and our favorite: adding a voice recording and sending it as a digital postcard. As for image quality, we were impressed with the quality both on screen and downloaded to a computer. We found colors to be vivid and the images clear and sharp.

You can also take videos with this cell phone, too. Video quality is pretty good and images really only blur when you shake the camera. We should note that it’s easy to accidentally cover the lens with your finger when you’re shooting videos. Additionally, the Samsung Omnia supports Divx and Xvid video files so you could watch movies on this smartphone so long as they are in one of those formats.

Music: The Samsung Omnia sports an MP3 player, FM radio and a podcast application. The smartphone comes with 8GB of internal memory, so you can store quite a few songs (at least a few albums' worth of tunes) and pictures on the cell phone. If you want more storage, we recommend buying an optional MicroSD media card, as this cell phone will support up to a 16GB MicroSD card. You can play MP3s, Microsofts WMA and Apple’s AACs audio files on the MP3 player. As noted, the audio quality could be better through the cell phone speaker. You can also set the music to pause when you’re using another application or let the music play in the background. The Samsung Omnia doesn’t have many audio-centric controls such as the ability to manually adjust bass and treble, however you can Shuffle, Repeat All or just one song, and create playlists on-the-fly.

Connectivity/Bluetooth/WiFi: We were able to pair the Samsung cell phone with a Plantronics 925 Bluetooth headset. We found call quality to be acceptable with the headset. And callers had no idea we were using a headset let alone a cell phone. Additionally, the Samsung Omnia supports stereo Bluetooth, which is great since this smartphone has a proprietary headset jack.

This Samsung Omnia has built-in WiFi so you can logo onto available WiFi networks to surf the Web or send/receive e-mail. It’s a nice feature, though you should spend the time to set it up before you plan to use it as it’s not exactly intuitive. We should note that surfing the Web on the Omni wasn’t bad, but WiFi was often faster. The trade-off is the drain on battery life.

Look and feel: You wouldn’t immediately guess that the Samsung Omnia is a Windows Mobile phone, you would however guess it’s a touchscreen phone. That’s because the Omnia is all screen. About that screen, it’s bright and sharp. When it’s not illuminated the front of the smartphone looks like a darkened mirror and if you look directly at it you can see shadows of yourself. This Samsung cell phone is more on the minimalistic side – read: it’s not littered with too many buttons. In fact, the front of the cell phone only has three keys: Talk, Back, and a launch button. On the Omnia’s side spines you’ll find volume keys, dedicated camera key, and a power button up top. The cell phone feels comfortable in the hand, fitting just right so that you can still easily maneuver through the cell phone’s features one handed if you so desire.

Keypad: Like many cell phones today the Samsung Omnia has a touch screen and as such offers two types of keypads: numeric and QWERTY. As far as touch screens go the one found on the Omnia was pretty responsive, although we did find that we occasionally needed the hidden stylus to navigate more effectively. We like the numeric keypad that appears when you press the phone icon at the base of the main screen and the QWERTY keypad that appears on a reoriented horizontal display when you turn the cell phone in a message screen. The nice thing about the keyboard is that the keys are spaced fairly well apart – so mistypes are at a minimum. Plus, there’s always the stylus that attaches to the Omnia like a cell phone charm.

In the battery life department, the Samsung Omnia is acceptable, but not stellar. We found that the smartphone could last about two days before recharging when using the Samsung Omnia regularly to make calls, occasionally surf the wireless Web, listen to music, and send/receive text messages. Users who barely use the cell phone to make/receive calls and send/receive messages can probably last closer to about four days before needing to recharge, while heavier cell phone users will likely need to charge the Omnia nightly just to be on the safe side. We should note that the Samsung cell phone uses a proprietary charger instead of one of the USB varieties, like many other cell phones currently available.

• PhoneDog's look at the Samsung Omnia