The Samsung SCH-i920 Omnia II is the latest and greatest Samsung touchscreen-equipped smartphone to grace Verizon's 3G network. It brings a huge new
Physical Aspects
The Omnia II follows the current trend in Samsung touchscreen phone design that we've been seeing since the release of the Jet. It sports a smooth, warm plastic back panel that features a handsome red pattern that is inspired by Samsung's Touch of Color line of TV sets. Some people think it looks cheap initially, but to me it adds some real style to the phone and makes it more enjoyable to hold, as well.
The front of the phone is fairly generic, as is the case with most "slab" style touchscreen smartphones. The beautiful and large 3.7-inch 800 x 480 pixel touchscreen display shows great colors and brightness, thanks to Samsung's use of AMOLED display technology. It is unfortunate, however, that the
The rest of the trimmings of the phone, including the few hardware buttons, are mostly fine. I certainly would have preferred an actual d-pad controller instead of the uber-large start menu button that sits between the call send and call end keys, but one can live without it. The OK button on the left edge of the phone and the lock button on the right edge both work well enough, but are located far too low on the device for me to activate easily when using the phone with a single hand.
But if you have smaller hands, you probably won't be able to use the Omnia II with one hand at all, since this is a pretty big phone. It measures 121mm x 61mm x 14mm (4.8in x 2.4 x .6in) in size, which is even longer than a Motorola DROID. It has a reasonable weight for such a large device, coming in at 143.2g (5.0oz).
Other odds and ends worth pointing out include the 3.5mm headphone jack, which is somewhat inconveniently positioned on the side of the phone, and the
For me, the design and physical build of the Samsung i920 Omnia II is great, except for the touchscreen responsiveness and maybe the lack of a d-pad. I love how it feels in my hand, and I think it is a device that any Fortune 500 CEO would feel proud to pull out of his sport coat. It has subtle, but rich looks that I can appreciate.
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Core Functions
Reception on the Samsung i920 Omnia II is not as good as it could have been, and this impacted call audio quality at times. With a good signal, calls sounded pretty good, but when the signal was a little weaker, we heard more distortion and static than we do with other Verizon phones. The speakerphone can be activated easily from an on-screen button during a call. It works OK, but sounds less clear than I would have liked at times - on both ends. The large 1500mAh battery in the Omnia II is rated for 5.8 hours of talk time or 19 days of standby time. My experience using the phone is that the battery is quite good, though 19 days of standby seems very unlikely - even if the phone sat unmolested on a desk for the entire time.
The Omnia II features Samsung's own TouchWiz contacts application, which is somewhat more finger friendly than the stock Windows Mobile application and certainly blends in better with the rest of the black themed apps on the phone. It supports searching on both first and last name at the same time, and it provides shortcuts to call or message a contact with one touch. It has all of the data storage capabilities of Windows Mobile, but with a new UI that is easier to read. It features quick access to groups, speed dials, and a list of favorite contacts, too.
The Omnia II has no real profiles system, which is dead common for touchscreen-equipped Windows Mobile phones. It does, however, feature a finger friendly way of adjusting both system sound and ringtone volume that is much nicer than what we've seen on Windows Mobile in the past. My only complaint is that the lowest system sound level is still too loud for random selections and such. As previously mentioned, the phone supports speed dialing, but users will often instead prefer to make use of the fine speaker-independent voice dialing system that is activated by long-pressing the call send key.
Messaging on the i920 is handled by mostly a stock Windows Mobile Inbox application that has been skinned in a black color scheme to better fit in with Samsung's own applications. Both SMS and MMS are supported, and SMS text messages can be viewed in a threaded, instant messaging style. The email client is pretty capable, easily handling POP, IMAP, and Microsoft Exchange servers. The HTML support for emails doesn't include any convenient zoom controls, but generally works. AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! instant messaging are all supported on the phone, but IM messages are charged as if they were text messages.
Data speeds on the Omnia II were fine, but not ultra-impressive. It generally managed to obtain download speeds of around 600kbps on Verizon's EV-DO Rev. A 3G network, according to DSLreports.com. The phone's WiFi capability worked fine, and I had no real problems with Bluetooth devices, either. An included micro-USB cable can be used to connect the Omnia II to a desktop PC for Microsoft Outlook synchronization or just for copying files to and from the device.
Multimedia / Applications
When it comes to multimedia tasks, the Samsung Omnia II's strength is photography. I really love the camera in this phone, since it focuses quickly and accurately, and it captures truly beautiful images. The flash is mostly usable in dark environments, and causes the white balance to turn a bit blue'ish, but in regular lighting the camera is virtually unstoppable. The user interface it offers is reasonable, and most of the important settings can be accessed very quickly with a tap or two of a finger. The DVD quality 720 x 480 pixel MP4 videos that the phone captures are also very good, and should look decent when uploaded to YouTube or a similar site. When it comes to playing videos, the Omnia II's DivX support will open the door to some really slick looking video that you can always pipe to a television using the phone's TV-out connection (cable not included).
Samsung opted to do something a little different with music on the Omnia II, adding its own media player to the phone with a brand new user interface and a cool looking cover-flow like album art view. The app organizes songs and videos nicely, and is pretty easy to use overall. The media player supports different DNSe modes as well as SRS WOW-HD modes, for those that like to tweak things a bit. The music player can be controlled from elsewhere in the phone by accessing the music controls in the phone's task manager or through a homescreen widget. On top of all this, the sound that comes through the Omnia II's built-in speakers is pretty decent sounding, and I like how a quick flip of the phone face down will automatically mute the audio. If you like purchasing music on the go, you'll be glad to hear that the V CAST Music store is available.
When it comes to web browsing, the i920 offers both Opera Mobile and the new Internet Explorer Mobile. Both have their pluses and minuses, but in general the Opera browser does more things right and provides for a better experience. The pages it renders are done so accurately, and the scrolling is smooth, even if the phone needs a second to catch up on redrawing the content. A quick double-tap zooms in or out, and the browser intelligently re-wraps text as needed. The browser works well in landscape mode, and it even supports embedded flash videos.
Samsung pushes its own My Calendar app for managing appointments, and I really like the look of the app and how it works. The stock Microsoft apps are supplied for tasks/todo items and Office documents (which can be edited on the phone). Samsung also provides some utilities, like unit conversions, as well as things like an RSS news reader and some basic on-phone video editing software. If you need more apps, you can use the new Windows Marketplace to find both free and paid-for programs.
One of the best items on the Omnia II's spec sheet is its 8GB of internal storage memory, which means most users probably won't need to use a microSD card, even though the option to add an additional 16GB of storage is there. In terms of application RAM, the Omnia II has about 140MB to work with, which seemed to be enough during my tests.
User Interface
People who read a lot of my reviews will likely know that I am no fan of Samsung's TouchWiz system in general. I feel that the widget-based homescreen it offers is difficult to organize and use, and likes to rearrange itself when used with resizing widgets. It's a mess, even with 3 homescreen panels to make use of. It is the same with Samsung's TouchWiz feature phones and Android devices, and it is certainly the case with the Omnia II.
But if you can ignore the messy homescreen, you'll find that Samsung has done an awful lot to change the way that Windows Mobile looks and feels. The new My Contacts and My Calendar apps are good examples, doing the same things as the original WinMo apps, but with new colors, larger finger friendly fonts, and a look that matches other TouchWiz devices. I like them. The new media player is another good example. Other parts of the system, apart from apps, have also been redone. The Start menu, Settings system, and Task Manager are good examples, though the Start menus still needs a lot of work.
The new Start menu tries to organize apps in a somewhat iPhone like way that makes some sense, and is very configurable, but fails when it comes to the animations. The motion from one panel to the next is very jerky and unappealing. The new settings system, clad in TouchWiz black, is very slick and generally well organized and easier to use than the default Windows Mobile version. The Task Manager can be called up easily with a long press of the start menu button, and lets users see small window versions of all of the running apps in two different ways. It's very nice. The Bluetooth and Wi-Fi managers are very visual in nature, and well enough. Again, different, but workable. On the Omnia II, at least, TouchWiz is decent, except for that one, very big thing - the widget homescreen. Sadly, the homescreen is one of the most important parts of a phone's UI, and that really weakens the Omnia II's standing (though the default Windows Mobile 6.5 homescreen can, and should, be used).
Another red mark on the Omnia II is it's 800MHz CPU, which seems sluggish too often - at least when left in the default Auto mode. There are settings for speeding up or slowing down the CPU, but you don't want to go any slower, and speeding things up will cost you battery life.
One of the new features of the Omnia II that I really, truly like is the Swype text input method. It makes the best use of a resistive touchscreen of any text input system I've seen. Users basically drag a stylus or finger tip from letter to letter, without lifting it, to spell out words. Watch the videos at the bottom of each of the first two pages of this review to see it in action. It's great.
In the end, the Omnia II feels like one of Samsung's feature phones, even though it has the brains of a smartphone. That's good and bad at the same time. Apart from the homescreen and its widget-inspired mess, the phone is easier to use for people not accustomed to smartphones. At the same time, it might annoy more seasoned users.
One last thing: the 3D cube menu is stupid. No need to explain it further.
Conclusion
When it's all added together, the Samsung i920 Omnia II for Verizon is a very good phone for those looking to move from devices like the LG enV Touch or Versa and into a device with real smartphone power. Its TouchWiz homescreen is bad, but at least you can use the good looking default Windows Mobile homescreen and still enjoy the better things about TouchWiz. I am disappointed by the performance of the phone's 800MHz CPU and resistive touchscreen (though the AMOLED part is fantastic), but I still like the phone in general. I just feel there are better and sexier phones out there for the same, or less, money. It still earns a solid "Recommended" rating, though, and is sure to please both Samsung and Windows Mobile fans alike.
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