Samsung Omnia II Offers Impressive Features But Lacks Speed

Samsung wowed the cell phone industry with its Omnia a few years back and followed it up successfully with the Omnia HD. The latest offering in the series named Omnia II looks impressive but it lacks the speed of some of its rival models. The USP of
the Omnia II is its awesome large AMOLED display that is a class ahead of the conventional LCD displays. Samsung uses its TouchWiz 3D Interface that runs on top of the Windows mobile OS. While it looks great it does take a toll on the speed of the phone. This becomes particularly evident when the user tries to multitask. The OMNIA II weights a little more than the first generation Omnia. Its brushed metal finish and rounded corners gives it an aesthetic appeal.

The WVGA AMOLED screen of the Omnia II is surrounded by a black lustrous border. It has only 3 hardware buttons. The audiophiles will appreciate the inclusion of a 3.5 mm headset jack, something the first version of the phone lacked. Its 8GB of
inbuilt memory is enough for storing media content. Apart from that the users can put in a microSD card with a capacity of 16 GB.

Since the Omnia II does not come with a Physical keyboard the users will have to use its on screen virtual keyboard. In portrait mode, the keyboard may seem a bit cramped particularly for the users with large fingers. However, it is okay in
landscape mode. The screen of the Omnia II offers haptic feedback but for some unknown reason Samsung has disabled the support for the on screen keyboard. However, once you get comfortable with the swipe technology used in this model, you will be able to type text faster. To make things easier for novice users, Samsung has bundled Video guide for using Swype with this model.

The Omnia II offers you the choice of having two web browsers, Opera Mobile 9.7 and IE mobile. Opera seems to be a little faster than IE and IE Mobile still needs to improve a lot before it can come close to Safari. The phone offers a lot of options
for music playback. You can either choose Windows Media player or opt for the visually appealing TouchWiz player. It also offers FM radio so that when the users get bored with the existing music collection they can try something different. As
expected, video playback looks great on the AMOLED screen of Omnia II and its wide viewing support makes watching video in outdoors a grand experience.

In the imaging department, the Omnia II does not disappoint. The inbuilt 5 MP camera comes with a flash and it takes decent quality images. The images look sharp and vivid and even in dim light conditions the camera captures the details quite well. If
you are looking for a top notch Windows mobile driven smart phone the Omnia II is a good choice. However, do not expect it to perform tasks at lightning speed. It does make up for the sluggish performance by offering loads of features.


Author: Marcus