A few weeks back I posted a question on Twitter asking whether the Samsung Omnia or the 3G iPhone is the better option. I’m due for an upgrade at the end of November and was unsure which phone to choose.

Imagine my surprise when Melody from Cerebra, the maverick company that manages Samsung’s online profile, phoned me to ask if I would like to trial the Omnia. My first weblebrity moment!

It’s taken me a while to actually write this review and the reason for this is two fold:
1.    When they initially sent me the sample phone, they forgot to include a charger.
2.    It was almost impossible to get the numbers from my existing phone on to the Omnia and as a result I was unable to use it for over a week. More about that later.

So for those of you who were interested in what the Omnia is like, herewith a list of my pro’s and con’s:

Pro’s:

1.    It’s a nice looking phone. Sleek, sexy, minimalist.
2.    It has a great camera – 5 mega pixels is enough to make any gadget girl’s heart beat faster.
3.    It has this awesome function that if you turn it over on to its face, it goes into silent mode with only the alarm function still active.
4.    The Windows operating system means you can create spreadsheets and mobile Word docs if that’s your thing.  Quite frankly I only use the phone, sms, mms, browser and alarm functions on my phone.

5. It has Garmin mapping.

Con’s:

1.    The UI is clunky. Very clunky. It reminds me why I gave away my previous Samsung.
2.    The touch screen leaves much to be desired. Samsung just have not got it quite right yet. The icons are too small (and no I don’t have fat fingers), it toggles between being too sensitive - when you text or when you scroll through the phonebook – or not being sensitive enough especially when you want to open a programme.
3.    The phone has a habit of changing its texting layout – next thing you know the buttons have all moved and you need to actually switch the phone off and on before you get the old layout back.
4.    There is no ‘back’ key. Granted I did not have an instruction manual, but there are only three buttons on the phone and you would think that between Parri and myself we would be able to figure it out. Nope, if you want to get back to the previous screen you have to kill the entire operation and start from scratch.
5.    I only know four numbers: mine, Parri’s, my dad’s home number and my office number. Needless to say that without my numbers I’m lost and having them ready and handy is a prerequisite for functioning in my world. When I tried bluetoothing my phone book from my Sony Ericsson to the Omnia however, it wouldn’t accept the file. When I copied all my numbers to my sim and inserted that into the Omnia, it would not read them. Four days later, during an emergency phone swop (my current phone’s battery went flat) I inserted the sim again and low and behold it finally read it. I now get why some people have two or more phones.
7.    The alarms and sounds on this phone set your hair on end.
8.    You can only delete conversations and not individual messages. Apparently the iPhone is the same so I guess I will have to get used to it.

The verdict: iPhone here I come. It may not be able to copy and paste or MMS, but if only for the geek appeal and the fact that the UI is top notch, it gets my vote for this round.

Thanks to Samsung and Cerebra for letting me try the Omnia though. You guys deserve at lest 11 points for being forward thinking and proactive - out of 10 that’s not too shabby

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 4:06 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.