This is a phone for the high end market. At Rs 35,999, it’s still very expensive. Buy it only if you want the flaunting features like the GPS and the 5 MP camera.
Expensive But Imperfect
The Samsung Omnia is another one of those awaited phones. In a market already flooded with Windows Mobile phones with touchscreens, the Omnia hits the Indian market all ready with the all new Windows Mobile 6.1.
The phone has a very minimalistic design, which is now more or less the norm for all touch screen phones. There are some slight appealing touches in the design, like the grooves around the camera that reflect rainbow colours and the mirror like casing around the touch screen.
There is a common port for interfacing with the computer and the headset, but this is set in the side of the phone. The stylus does not dock into the phone, but you can dangle it from the phone like an ill-attached limb if you want. The stylus is telescopic, and telescopes out almost magically when the cap is opened.
The touch screen does not respond to touch as much as it responds to pressure — you have to press the screen to get anything done. There are some glaring mistakes — it is impossible to scroll down the playlist in the “touch player”. The on-call menu locks itself every three seconds, which means you have to press an action button and a button on the screen just to activate the speaker. The screen mode is eccentric and inconsistent. It switches from portrait to landscape at its own violation, and then misbehaves when you turn the phone to specifically change it. The phone has a cursor feature which makes touch navigation easier.
Programs take time to load, true even for the clock or the phonebook. The start menu disappears when you close programs at times. There is a great feature that lets the phone behave as external memory for both the phone and the memcard memory. The camera has many modes to play around with, and powerful flash that stays on for some time which helps in taking photos. The image quality is not great. There is a panorama mode restricted to 180 degrees. The photos tend to be a little overexposed, the background is focused in the portrait mode, and the camera cannot clearly focus anything closer than 3 inches to the lens even in the macro mode. The sound quality while using the headset is excellent, helped by the tunnel earplugs. There is little punch in the bass, but the other frequencies are handled well. The speaker is not too loud, and playing any song using the speaker is sounds appalling.
The phone ships with three sets of earpads for the headset, for different ear sizes. A nice touch is that the headset has a standard pin that allows you to plug in your own headphones to the device.