Samsung Omnia i8910 HD Review

Now available to pre-order, the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is going to be huge. And all aspects of that description will fit this amazing handset. The original Omnia, lets face it, was a bit of a let down, with the main issue being poor memory management. It’s one of those handsets that sits on display in stores, but rarely gets a recommendation because it just isn’t worth the hassle that it brings in after sales care. Now, the i8910, that’s a whole different story. The Omnia HD comes with one of the longest spec lists ever seen on a mobile phone, and at every step the features are top of the range, camera, screen, memory, data speed, and so on. The Omnia HD cup indeed runneth over with top talent. Join us as we dive into the detail of every geek’s dream phone.

The main problem with previewing a handset like the i8910 is where to start? There is so much to look at, so much to take in and look forward to, but with this phone we really need to start with its imaging capabilities.

Firstly, the Omnia HD is endowed with a high quality 8.0 megapixel camera, with autofocus and an LED flash. The camera will support face detection, smile detection, blink detection, and image stabilisation. Pretty much everything you need to ensure you capture the perfect picture. You can also tag your pictures with location information thanks to the Omnia having a built in GPS receiver. This information is stored in the digital file with the image, and can be displayed when uploaded, so people who view your images can run this through online maps and see where you were when a picture was taken. Now, whilst that in itself is pretty impressive, it is not even half the story when it comes to imaging.

The Omnia HD, if you haven’t already intuited from the name, is capable of capturing video clips in HD quality. HD 720p at 24 fps, D1 720x480 pixels at 30 fps and QVGA time lapse recording is possible, as well as an option for super slow motion video recording. The Omnia HD is indeed looking to acquire for itself the title of Imaging King amongst mobiles, and with this sort of power it can easily give many standalone digital cameras a run for their money.

Alongside the high quality, high definition video capture, the i8910 can also playback video clips in glorious definition thanks to the absolutely gorgeous, huge screen. Supporting up to 16 million colours, the screen measures in at a stonking 3.7 inches from point to point, 360 x 640 pixels, and is a capacitive AMOLED Touchscreen! AMOLED screens offer much clearer colour definition than the standard TFT screen, which in turn allows for a sharper, clearer on screen image. AMOLED also uses less battery power, which is always a bonus on high power devices. If there is one thing that the AMOLED screen isn’t so good with, it is view ability in direct sunlight, and the Omnia HD will suffer in this regard too.

The Video player supports many popular video formats, such as MP4, WMV, DixV and XviD, which covers pretty much everything you need.  Naturally, the media player will also playback your audio files, with support for all the popular audio formats. Samsung have also seen fit to include a 3.5mm audio output jack on the phone, which is a must on any device that wishes to be seen as a serious media device. A quick shout out to the FM radio is deserved at this point. Almost a standard feature on many mobile devices these days, but Samsung have equipped the Omnia with an FM transmitter too, so not only can you listen to your favourite FM station on the move, you can stream music already stored on your device to a nearby FM radio, just by selecting a free frequency, ideal for playing music in the car through the car stereo or at a friend’s house through their home HiFi unit.

You will need a lot of memory if you are going to take videos and pictures at full resolution, and store a few movies, too. Samsung have anticipated this and enabled the Omnia HD with an amazing 16GB of internal memory which can be expanded with the addition of Micro SD cards, currently available up to 16GB with 32GB cards due to market anytime soon.

There will be some who can see the potential of a device like the i8910 for a web browsing device as well, thanks to the big screen. To cater for this the Omnia HD supports HSDPA at up to 7.2Mbps and HSUPA at an incredible 5.76Mbps! Not only that, WiFi 802.11 b/g support is included too, plus support for DLNA, so you can easily slot your device into your home network, and browse the web from the comfort of your sofa, stream video content from YouTube and play through your own music library stored on your home PC.

The first Omnia handset ran on Windows Mobile, but the Omnia HD does not. For this device, Samsung have decided to run it on S60v5. Now, when you mention S60, the automatic assumption is to think Nokia. By far and away the biggest manufacturer of S60 devices, Nokia use this operating system to power all the devices in their Nseries and Eseries range of handsets, and are slowly bringing this system over to generic devices such as the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music. The Omnia HD uses the same version of S60 that the 5800 Xpress music uses, S60 optimised for touchscreen use. But what Samsung have done is to put their own TouchWiz interface over the S60 operating system, and in doing so have created a handset that is instinctively Samsung in use and design, coupled with the reliability and stability of the S60 system. And of course, being S60 the Omnia HD will run pretty much any application that is set up to run on S60v5 touchscreen devices, including applications such as Google Maps, YouTube and SKY TV.

The i8910 Omnia HD is a whole lot of phone, and at some point a few sacrifices in terms of size need to be made. If you want a nice bright large clear screen, then the size of the phone is going to increase accordingly. The Samsung weighs in at a fairly hefty 144g, and is 123mm long, 58mm wide. Thankfully it is only 12.9mm thick, but this is not a device to be carried around unnoticed in your shirt pocket.

As we said at the beginning, the Omnia HD is going to be big; this is in terms of size, for sure, but also in terms of desirability and functionality. This phone promises to be the ultimate media device, with amazing imagery, high quality camera, top rate video recording, multi level video format support, amazingly clear, large screen, and high speed web connectivity to boot.

With all this technical wizardry, if there would be one area you could think the Omnia HD could let you down it would be in the power department; thankfully, Samsung have foreseen this and include a whopping 1500mAh lithium ion battery with the device. This is the same level battery that gives the Nokia E71 its enviable standby time; coupled with a power friendly AMOLED screen, and running on S60 which is optimised with many power saving features, the Samsung Omnia HD will not disappoint. Pre-order now with stock expected to be released this Friday (15th)

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