Samsung Omnia i900 review

Average user rating

6.7

good

Average user rating from 6 users

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Samsung Omnia i900 user reviews

September 9, 2008

Posted by: Fongy

"Cooler than a polar bear in a refrigerator"

What I like:

Omnia says it all - everything

What I don't like:

Resolution could be better

Review:

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.