I’ve just got a new phone. It’s a Samsung Omnia (i900) and it looks like this. I’ve been working Vodafone down in price for a few years now so I’ve ended up keeping my current price plan but getting a phone that is usually only available on much more expensive contracts. The only concession I had to make was that I would sign up for 2 years which means if I end up not liking the Omnia, I’ve got a long wait for an upgrade. Fortunately I quite liked my old phone (the ubiquitous Nokia 6300) so I can go back to that if I have to.
So far though it’s pretty good. It runs Windows Mobile 6 with a special Samsung interface on top which essentially attempts to make it feel more like the iPhone interface (as you can see from the picture). It comes with Opera Mobile, which does a pretty good job of emulating the Safari web browser, the camera is pretty good (for a phone), email is easy to set up, the on-screen keyboard works about as well as the iPhone’s, Google Maps works with the GPS (a search for pizza will show the 10 nearest Dominos, etc which is pretty swish), the video player works at both streaming from the internet (but it’s only watchable when you’ve got 3G coverage) and from files stored on the 8GB memory (as long as you encode them into wmv files).
All in all, at the end of week 1 of usage, I’m pretty happy with it. It’s not as slick and flashy as the iPhone but it can do pretty much everything the iPhone can do and it’s worked out a few hundred pounds cheaper for me.
Tags: samsung omnia, windows mobile
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