Let’s start this off in a straightforward style. The Samsung Omnia II is a 3.7-inch 480×800 AMOLED resistive touchscreen smartphone with Windows Mobile 6.5, a 5 megapixel camera with 720x480px video capture, 8GB of internal storage with a microSD expansion slot, GPS/Wi-Fi/Verizon 3G, and FM radio. Right off the bat though — exactly when you turn it on — things start to go wrong.
Price as Reviewed: $199 on 2-year contract with Verizon Wireless
Full disclosure: This review unit was sent in by Samsung for review
The Hardware Is Very Nice
Look at it. While it may have a very flashy back cover, the Samsung Omnia II has all of the great looks of a real smartphone. Yes, there may be a plethora of buttons (something Samsung seems to be fond of), but overall design-wise, I could use the Omnia II as my main handset. There’s no doubt about that. To start off with, there’s Opera Mobile pre-installed, the always-amazing Swype virtual keyboard, which allows you to enter text without lifting a finger, and recently gained the Omnia II a Guinness World Record for the fastest text message in the world.
Above: Omnia II Camera Test
The 5 megapixel camera could easily replace a point-and-shot camera for photos, and sometimes even video, but only during the day, as night shots are impossible to recognize.
For your everyday needs there’s an OK button, camera focus and shutter button, volume rocker, 3.5mm headset jack, micro USB port and lock switch. But every single bit of it goes straight down when you look at the software it uses.
The Software Is The Downfall
To top it off, Windows Mobile 6.5 is going to be behind by the end of this year (remember Windows phone 7?), plus speed and usability cripples the Omnia II.
It’s so sloooooow.
Look at it in a logical way: this Samsung mobile smartphone uses an 800Mhz processor. When you look at it logically, everything should be zippy, right? Wrong. The Windows Mobile OS slows everything down. Much like the Behold II, the Omnia II uses the Touchwiz UI, which at first glance, is not very appealing. The “Cube” feature is like the logo of the Nintendo 64, except it allows you to access various tasks such as browsing the web, music, and so on. But there’s no real need for it; you could simply use the app menus (which are also in need of improvement).
Samsung Omnia II Gallery
One thing that I’d like to point out here is that the widget panel, which lets you add widgets to each of the homescreens, and allows you to download new ones, is extremely laggy, as is scrolling through the 3 homescreens you have at your disposal. It’s a great concept, but WinMo kills it, much like the entire handset, which by itself is great. The Touchwiz UI as an overlay for mobile phone platforms (like Android 1.5) is in need of a serious overhaul. Everything is confusing from the get-go, with slow animations and endless menus, which isn’t the best combo to deal with when you have a great looking, but resistive touchscreen, and which is actually a standard on the average Windows Mobile “touchscreen” handset.
Take the simplest thing that Samsung should have gotten right: the app screen. Since this is Touchwiz, the normal downwards scrolling Windows Mobile 6.5 menu is replaced by an iPhone-like homescreen, which would open apps when I intended to simply scroll through them. And also, most actions are accompanied by haptic feedback, which only makes the experience more frustrating. And despite being laggy, even the battery life is less than pleasing. In order to speed up apps and the rest of the whole experience, I set the software to “Performance” mode. This didn’t really help, and drained out the battery quickly, until it died, and that wasn’t even a whole day.
The Conclusion:
I’d say that the Samsung Omnia II is a lot like the HTC HD2. It’s a great handset, with nice styling, a good camera, and pleasing weight (it’s very, very light) but is utterly ruined by Windows Mobile. Completely ruined. At this point, there’s nothing a fair reviewer can suggest except buying another phone on Verizon’s network, for example the Droid Incredible, or even Moto’s Droid if you’re looking for a keyboard. Keep in mind that all three handsets are priced the same, which is $199 on a 2-year agreement. Sorry Samsung, you just didn’t cut it here, again.
Pros:
- Hardware-wise, it’s okay looking
- It’s very lightweight
- Great camera, though it’s not as good in lower light
- Verizon Wireless service is spot on as usual, with great data and voice quality.
Cons:
- Windows Mobile 6.5 and Touchwiz are the problems here
- It gets laggy
- The battery life is very short
- It’s completely made out of cheap-feeling plastic
