Samsung Omnia II (I8000)

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Performance

Even with its large and bright screen, battery life was surprisingly good for the I8000. It lasted about two days on a single charge of its 1,500mAh battery. One battery-saving feature it possesses is auto brightness which conserves the charge by lowering the backlight in darker locations. This is a common smartphone feature, but we found the Omnia II's sensor a little too sensitive and a slight tilt of the device in the hands would cause the backlight to adjust. This can be annoying when reading text onscreen.

Voice quality was good for regular calls and we had no issues with reception. The front camera provided a good image to the other party during video calls but the person receiving the call pointed out that our voice sounded muffled during the conference.

The Omnia II contains an 800MHz Samsung processor and 256MB of RAM. It was responsive for the most part, though as mentioned earlier, certain parts of the interface slowed down at times. The device currently ships with Windows Mobile 6.1, but that can be upgraded to 6.5 when Microsoft releases the update.

Conclusion

Samsung has made a decent successor to the original Omnia with this second version. Its features are up to speed with all the current high-end Windows Mobile devices and the price is an attractive S$898 without operator discounts. A quick check with Singapore telcos revealed that the Omnia II is going for as low as S$398 on some mid-tier price plans. Similar products from competitor HTC are at least S$200 more.

Even though its interface may not be as slick and the hardware not as desirable as the iPhone or Touch HD, the Omnia II's price is undeniably attractive. If you are looking for a new, fully featured Windows Mobile device without a physical keypad, you can't go too far wrong with Samsung's latest offering.

Tags: Smart Phone, HTC Touch, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Microsoft Windows Mobile, Cell Phone

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