After using the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD for over a month now, I’m still having some mixed feeling about the phone. At one hand, the specs and features are awesome but one the other hand, the S60 platform kind of ruined the experience a bit. Let me share with you my thoughts in this review.
The Samsung Omnia HD looks gorgeous — really large screen, slim and sleek. The capacitive touchscreen itself is pretty good with enough sensitivity so you don’t often re-tap on icons and widgets. Scrolling is smooth as well (except when using the browser) and seems pretty close to the responsiveness of the iPhone 3G. See more photos here and complete specs here.
The 3.7″ 640×360-pixel real estate, one of the largest I’ve seen on a smartphone, makes for watching videos very enjoyable. I loaded up a couple of DivX files and they played smoothly with the display crisp and bright even at an angle.
I bumped into a bug though — some of the DivX videos would not show up on vertical orientation but would play just fine in horizontal (scaling problem, perhaps?).
Samsung used the Symbian S60 platform here but added the TouchWiz UI as well so aside from the familiar interface of the S60, you also get some added navigational menus like the sliding bar at the left where you can pull up widgets. There’s also a floating bar on top which gives you 3 layers of desktop-like display. Checkout the screenshots below.
The 8-megapixel camera takes great pictures, especially hidef (720p @ 24fps) videos. The built-in flash is bright enough to be able to lit objects within 2 meters from the camera. Close-up shots, like the one below, show some decent depth of field.
(Click to download the original images; 2.64MB each.)
The i8910 has quite a number of storage, both built-in and external — 58MB NAND Flash, 148MB RAM, 8MB ROM, 8GB internal memory card, up to 32GB external memory card (microSD). With the 16GB model and a 32GB external microSD card, you can rack up to 48GB of storage on this phone.
Web browsing via WiFi or 3G/HSDPA is fairly fast although the built-in browser is a bit cumbersome to use.
The battery is rated at only 1000mAh and would normally last about 2 days on regular use but it gets easily drained when you play videos/music or browse the net using WiFi or 3G (the commercial units are reported at 1500mAh).
Some nice additions:
Digital Compass – something the G2 and the iPhone 3GS also have. Not really that usefull unless you’re the hiking-type of person.
Smart Card Reader – scan a business/calling card with the camera and it automatically recognizes the information (name, phone, email, webiste, etc.) and stores it on the phone. Pretty accurate at around 80 – 90% character recognition.
LBS Services – Samsung included a number of location-based services in the unit to make good use of the GPS/AGPS features.
The Samsung i8910 has all you’d ever wanted for a multimedia phone and more. However, despite the powerful engine under the hood, it feels like the S60 platform is still somewhat slow and laggy at times, giving you an impression that it’s underpowered. We first saw this S60 5th Edition platform with the Nokia 5800XM but since that one had a slower CPU, smaller screen and uses resistive touchscreen, the Samsung i8910 beats it in almost all aspect.
Since the handset I am using is an engineering/prototype unit, some of the bugs/kinks might have been fixed or improved on the commercial release.
I did a comparative chart of features pitting the Samsung i8910 HD against the iPhone 3GS, Nokia N97, LG Arena and the HTC Magic here earlier and the i8910 got top marks. It’s not cheap though — expect to shell out Php32,000 for the 8GB model and Php36,000 for the 16GB model.
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hi
do yo have info on a ph release date?
i’ve been holding off on replacing my aging phone, till the i8910hd’s release.lol
pretty hefty price but considering how much the iphone costs as well, this might be a good alternative already.
i want bumblebee
Looks great. but the Price? hmm..
Mag HD tv na lang lol
great phone but for that money i rather have a netbook and a decent midrange phone.:-)
great phone but for that money i rather have a netbook and a decent midrange phone.
omg! you’re watching the legend of the seeker too! love it! ;-D
btw, yeah, the phone is mahal.
great specs thou a bit pricy!
sir yuga can you post some reviews on Samsung S8000 Jet…thanks.
arbor na yan master yuga!
It won the European Award as the best camera phone.
they should have stick to WM..because of symbian OS now i have doubts on upgrading my Omnia i900..
Great camera on the Omnia HD. Nice!
But, this went to stores a little too late. I got myself a HTC Touch Pro2 instead.
pls abe,
any release date info?
Check out my review on the Samsung Jet S8003 –
http://www.mangochico.com/samsung-jet-s8003-review/
Hi Abe, yes, we would appreciate a review of the Samsung Jet.
any idea of its price mga tol
hi when po ba talaga release date nito philippines???any idea po
this october na xa release according to samsung philippines.. hopefully
8 gig is 33000 daw
16 gig is 37000 daw
mga dude, out n s memoxpress un samsung i8910 hd. i already got 1. bt 1st compare nyo din sa omnia II.
magkano mo xa nabili?? ano mga freebies? jeje
ganun po ba 8gb palang lumabas la pa 16gb eh hay cant wait na hehehe
im selling my omnia hd (8gb) with Full Body Invisible Shield
Interested Buyer
email me
shin_san88@yahoo.com
just got my i8910 around a week ago, and it runs like a dream ^^,
tried out the wifi in sm bicutan with my phone, and pages load pretty fast ^^ took some pics too, and they really are uber clear.
the thing about the vids though really have to do with how the vids are encoded. i was able to experiment with a free vid converter (the i8910 runs divx, mpeg4 and wmv files… sadly it can’t run avi files, but converters abound ^^), and i was able to convert an 1hr and a half long movie into a 600+MB file (conversion took around 15mins)… not bad ^^,
i lover the picture contacts where you can get a picture and assign or link an area of the picture to a contact, and then you can call or message the person from the picture contacts mode ^^
i’m hoping i can visit a samsung store soon since i wanted to get the latest firmware update from europe where they integrated the new 3D task manager.
cons… well… there are a couple…
there seems to be a prob with newly downloaded widgets. tried to download the clickthecity widget to my phone, but it won’t show.
apparently with the symbian set-up, the camera/vid function can’t save settings. you have to set them up every time you launch the application.
apart from that… i’m happy that i got this phone ^^,
Please email me the Phililppine Price of Samsung Omnia with 8GB. Thanks
SAMSUNG’s I8910 HD leaves nothing to be desired. It shoots video in full HD and photos with 8MP. The world’s largest AMOLED display at 3.7″ is your own personal movie screen that auto rotates. That along with high-speed web access, there’s no reason to leave work or play for later on. Add to that up to 16GB of built-in memory and we’re sure you’ll find plenty of ways to use it ─ 35 movies, 12,000 MP3 songs or 18,000 photos.
Hope this info leads you to the find SAMSUNG’s I8910 HD..=)
Ponce Bldg., Araneta St., Bacolod City Bacolod City, Negros Occidental
phone: 4323090
A. MEGA CELLULAR NETWORK INC.
Manila Manila, Metro Manila
email:
phone: (2) 5231633
fax:
B. TOPWIN TELECOMS
Cash and Carry Southsuperhighway, Makati City Manila, Metro Manila
email:
phone: (2) 8190225
fax:
may i know watz the price of that omnia fon plzzzz?
hope ul find S3500 mobile phone price and ES17 digital camera plszzz….
the i8910 8 gb sells for 31000 at all samsung dealers and the 16 gb sells for 33290. these phones are on promo and comes with free phones plus free discount coupons concerts and other stuffs. the promo will only run until the end of this month