Samsung Omnia i900 user reviews
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User reviews6
bdgr 11 October 2009
Good: It looks good and 'should' be great...
Bad: not very responsive
Comment: I started off really liking this phone - not having had a touchscreen phone before I enjoyed the novelty. However....
The phone has stopped switching from portrait to landscape viewing unless its plugged into the mains.
The keyboard layout is clumsy. Letters on one page, numbers on the other - fair enough, but only the full stop and comma are set with the letters, with the apostrophe grouped (with other symbols) in with the numbers! This makes writing words like I'm, I'll that's etc a right chore (maybe I'm being picky?).
It takes an age to start up - over 1 minute from turning it on to getting to the front screen.
When the phone is locked, sometimes I can answer a call, while other times it wants me to unlock the phone to press the answer button. And doing this takes enough time for the call to go to voicemail which turns the phone into a fancy pager! I've lost count of the number calls I've missed because of this.
You get a stylus to use... with nowhere on the phone to store it! Because of this it's never used. I don't want to have to find the stylus before i can use the phone!!! Thankfully it works just as well with your finger (unless you want to use the scrolling bar on applications - its just too fiddly without the stylus).
It's a shame because the phone itself looks good, and with the windows system is easy to use due to familiarity. Plus with office included you can easily use word/excel/powerpoint and transfer to your pc.
tez12345 16 April 2009
Good: The best phone in the world
Bad: nothing to hate
Comment: It owns best phone until Microsoft phone
jampots2000 6 April 2009
Good: The Design
Bad: Software is a disaster!
Comment: Had this product for around 2weeks, on the first day camera wouldn't work and i had to reset the phone to use it, this problem still exists.Seccondly i have task manager set to open when i hold down the menu button, however this does not work. Sometimes when im trying to send texts or make phone calls the phone tells me it is not switched on (it clearly is as i am using it) this can take hours to sort out. Really not wort the money at all. i wish i never bothered to be honest.
Professor Pluto 23 November 2008
Good: A jack of all trades
Bad: A master of none
Comment: This device appears to be what we've all been waiting for...
ie: one 'do-it-all' device to carry, rather than 3 or 4
(a phone, text machine, wed tablet, 5mp camera, sat/nav, internet tablet, mp3 player, personal organiser, mini-computer... maybe even a tv, if it accepts the Slingshot software?).
I'll start with the biggest deal-breaker: MP3 audio quality.
It's awful !!!
I invested in the 16gb version (upgradeable by another 32gb, when Sandisk release that card in Jan09). Now all that amazing storage will be used for our music collection, won't it? But what's the point, when the quality is so bad it's unlistenable???
I'm not just talking about the throw-away-quality bundled headphones (which are not even designed to fit human ears, let alone play music)... even swapping for Senheisser CX300 fails to deliver any acceptable qualty audio.
It's so bad, it's a real deal breaker (trust me).
Otherwise, you could live with this gadget.
The camera is a little soft, but it's improvable once you transfer your piccies to a pc (and the flash is better than I expected for an LED flash, but still a Xenon would be better).
The keyboard for texting is very unresponsive, and (trust me) it covers almost the entire screen, when used horizontally... leaving almost no room to read the message you're typing!
Please test this before you buy... It's beyond belief.
A pocket PC phone cannot cope with a screen so small, and a device so thin & flimsy (though well built). It needs to be more substantial object, that incorporates a stylus!!!)
As for it being a sat/nav... it only accepts '''ONE''' sat/nav package, Route 66 (I'm not sure they should be allowed to advertise it the way they do, under these circumstances).
Once Route 66 is added, you've a money-grabbing package that wants to charge you extra for all the things that should have been included with the original package (like speed camera detection).
They should also offer the option to purchase 'Sattelite Detection' as an extra, because this little thing does not like finding sattelites!!!
You'll be a your destination via your scribbled notes long before it decides it's realised where you are.
And why this software is the one that's compatible, when the text is only readable under a microscope, is beyond me (it's almost laughable).
The Samsung extras, to make Windows Mobile more user friendly, was a very good attempt... but the rolling-scrolling screens (ala-iPhone) are just frustrating, as the processor cannot cope with them fluidly.
They're more jarring-freezing, than rolling scrolling.
If the music was acceptable, I could live with everything else, but as I said at the start... it's (sadly) a real deal-breaker.
(ps: I've so far been unable to get the Slingbox Mobile software to run on this device either)
Fongy 9 September 2008
Good: Omnia says it all - everything
Bad: Resolution could be better
Comment: I am disappointed. Disappointed with the CNET review of this and the angle it has taken - and especially with the difference in scores it has given between this and the iphone 3G.
The fact that a paragraph can be dedicated to the anticipation of the iphone having 3G and how fast it is going to be over EDGE is ludicrous. Even the most basic of handsets have 3G nowadays and yet, for some reason when it comes to the iphone this feature is 'awe-inspiring'.
The Omnia has pretty much every application you could need - out of the box, with the possibility of limitless customisation thanks to the albeit not-so-pretty Windows platform.
I'm not saying the Omnia is perfect, it's not, but it's a damned-site better than 7.9 and frankly it is on par (in its own way) with the iphone 3G.
Every phone that has a touch screen is now instantly compared to the iphone, despite the fact that companies such as HTC have been making them for years now.
I think the iphone is a seperate product, unique in its class, and is a different beast to something like the Omnia, Touch and X1.
The Omnia has a 5mp camera, excellent for a phone in its class - with advanced features and great results (check other reviews for sample pictures). The iphone has an incredibly poor 2mp camera, no mms, and no video shooting capabilities - not qualities of an 'excellent' phone.
Yes the iphone has an excellent interface, great audio capabilities and a cool design - but on the whole - it doesn't deliver a total experience - products such as X1, Diamond and Omnia give a total balanced experience, not necessarily over-excelling in every area, but at the very least they give cut-and-paste options, keyboards in landscape mode and video playback virtually every movie type (another omission for the iphone 3G review).
For some reason reviewers do not want to highlight the glaring faults with the iphone, maybe they believe that it will somehow damage their credibility, however, I believe reviews like this damage them more.
I am a long time fan of CNET and their reviews, I just think recently reviews appear to be too skewed into comparing every feature to the iphone and not giving the reviewed handset its own chance to shine.
I own an Omnia, and this is after really researching reviews on all the top handsets (xperia, touch pro, diamond, and the iphone) - and I couldn't justify purchasing a phone that didn't send pictures, and has a string of limitations as long as your arm.
With Opera 9.5 now giving the same browsing quality as Safari, the Omnia providing video playback for virtually every type of movie file (reduced to one line in this review, compared to only one type of file - quicktime - on iphone), and the ability to further customise with applications that do not have to be approved by Apple - when you properly compare devices, this really is on par, if not above the iphone.
7.9 (Omnia) vs 8.9 (iphone) come on CNET, do me a favour, play fair.
Daymo 7 September 2008
Good: Great looking handset, Camera, Windows 6.1,GPS and much more
Bad: Plastic not metal casing.
Comment: Had this phone for 2 weeks and I love it. Looks great and is packed with features. Camera quality while isnt digital camera quality is still very good, with tons of applications to get the picture just right. GPS is fantastic and web browsing is a dream with Opera 9.5 and wi fi. The only thing that really lets it down is I wish it was metal and not plastic. If dropped or mishandled could be damaged easily. Anyway its the best phone I have ever had and I have had some very good ones.