Extreme Makeover: Phone Edition
After quite some time working with an LG VX-8350 with faulty Bluetooth and a bum speaker, I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my cell phone. I had a few criteria that had to be met. First of all, it needed to be a smart phone. I have recently started a job that requires a lot of travel so I need to have access to my calendar and email from the road. Second, I wanted a touch screen. I know that they can be kind of gimmicky, but using a smart phone without a touch screen can be a bit of a hassle. Third, I have a company car and policy states that I need a hands-free device, so good Bluetooth was a must. Last, in order to save money, I’m still on a family plan with my folks through Verizon, so it needed to be something that the Big Red offered.
Eventually I chose the Samsung Omnia. I had to wait a while for a decent phone – anyone that’s on Verizon knows that the selection has been pretty scarce until just the last month (the BlackBerry Storm and HTC Touch Pro were also recently released). I’ve had the phone for about three weeks and have definitely appreciated its functionality.
Smart Phone
On Verizon you have two options for smart phone OS: Palm or Windows Mobile. Android looks pretty sexy, but the G1 is only on T-Mobile. The interface and App Store on the iPhone are both snazzy, but I don’t have AT&T. I’ve rocked both Palm and WinMo and even with all the problems I experienced with WinMo 5 on a PPC-6700 (Sprint – huge waste of phone), I still prefer WinMo for ease of use with XP. The Omnia comes loaded with WinMo 6.1 Pro. The OS can cook pretty well (periodical slowdowns), and is a huge improvement over WinMo 5.
Samsung has included two different applications for the Today screen to be run individually. The default app is Samsung Widget, and it’s not half bad. However, as soon as I discovered Samsung Today, I changed and haven’t looked back. My only qualm with Samsung Today is that it isn’t customizable (or at least not that I’ve found).
Touch Screen
I was a little wary getting a phone without a QWERTY keyboard, let alone any keys at all. The HTC Touch Pro has a slide-out QWERT keyboard and was high on my list but just too far out of my price range. I digress…
The screen is 3.2″ and offers up quite an impressive display. The Iron Man movie trailer I watched at the store was very nice. The only buttons on the device are send, end, a center click/trackpad, camera, volume up and down, menu and power. No numbers, no letters, nothing. With big hands, I was a little concerned with typing on the screen. I’d played with an iPhone, Storm and an LG Dare and had a little bit of difficulty typing on the screens.
I’ll admit that typing on this thing was a little difficult at first, but I’ve definitely gotten used to it. Though my big thumbs have gotten used to it, it isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. The touch areas for each letter are pretty small when in portrait mode. The size is much better when you have the phone in landscape, but it does take up quite a bit of real estate on the screen, especially when browsing websites that don’t auto adjust for the area you’re typing in. Enabling xt9 takes up even more real estate on the screen with the suggested word.
Blue Tooth
The Blue Tooth on this phone has changed my Motorola H700 from a tin can with a string to a direct line with God. When talking with people on the VX-8350, I’d hear many a complaint about my headset, but never again have I heard any complaints. Voice dialing even works pretty well – much better than any phone I’ve used in the past, save for a few occasions where the phone misunderstood what I was requesting. Syncing with my laptop over BT is also very simple to set up and works like a charm.
Extras
The phone is loaded with extras. The camera is 5 megapixel, which isn’t much for a standard digital camera, but this is a phone. That’s a pretty impressive camera (and it takes pretty impressive pictures). There are accelerometers built in to the phone that auto-rotate the screen depending on orientation. A nifty little feature from the accelerometers is “Etiquette Mode” – if you place the phone face down, notifications are muted.
There are a few software applications that are installed over top of the default WinMo apps: an extra phonebook app to more easily navigate your contacts, an FM radio (requires the included dongle to act as an antenna), touch music and video players, picture viewer similar to scrolling album art, podcast manager, RSS reader and a “smart reader,” which you can use to take a picture of a business card to automatically make a new contact.
Eyeliner…or is it?
The stylus for the phone is not actually in the phone, but rather tethered to the phone. It actually looks like a small can/jar/thing of eyeliner, especially when pulled out! At first I thought that I would hate having it flop around all over the place, but the tether is just long enough to hold it out of the way while talking, but short enough from it getting tangled in everything. The stylus also locks in to the lid pretty tightly, so I’m not ever worried about losing it (which is when I will, undoubtedly). The rest of the hardware is pretty solid – it is not made out of cheap-o materials.
The Omnia has a great design, amazing functionality, wonderful sound and a great set of extra features. If you are looking at upgrading your phone and are tied to Verizon, I definitely recommend the Omnia!
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