MWC 2009: Samsung officially drop Windows Mobile for Omnia successor, the Omnia HD

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

The successor to the Samsung Omnia, the recent poster-child for Windows Mobile, has now been announced at Mobile World Congress 2009 here in Barcelona... and it's NOT running Windows Mobile!

In a move that is sure to disappoint Windows Mobile fans (me included), the new Omnia is running the Touch enabled version of the Symbian Foundation's S60 platform.

Specs on the new device include...

• 720p video capture
• 3.7" AMOLED 16m colour screen
• 8.1 Megapixel camera
• 8GB / 16GB internal storage
  

Oh Samsung, how you have let us down! :(

You can pick up the full press release on the Samsung site or read more over at our friends AllAboutSymbian.

P

[Guest awarner (MVP)]

Make a first rate device then ruin it with a second rate OS

Or is it down to OS licencing costs?

[Guest Perfectionist]

NOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!

It was bad enough that the T-Omnia wasn't gonna be made available here ..... now this !!

But before I commit suicide ...... surely they will "eventually" offer WinMo on this device ...... or maybe they are waiting for Mobile 7 to come out ??

[Guest fraktal]

Make a first rate device then ruin it with a second rate OS

Or is it down to OS licencing costs?

Well the latest version of symbian s60 is meant to be awesome and pretty and usable...and think of the money they'll save on styluses!

TBH I can see why they made the move...I'm beginning to become disillusioned with WM (disclaimer - I haven't seen the new WM6.5 stuff yet)...

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

They may well make something else with WM, Samsung like to chop and change! :(

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[Guest jamesjames_]

They may well make something else with WM, Samsung like to chop and change! :(

P

They just can't run device with 8mpx, 720p video and AMOLED capacitive screen with 16M under WM. Well the new Symbian isn't that bad after all, and I guess they really are waiting for WM7. With 6.1 or 6.5 limitations this device wouldn't be much of upgrade...

[Guest]

I seem to remember a topic a while back asking what would tempt you away from Windows Mobile....erm...this just might be it! :(

[Guest NuShrike]

I wonder if it's because WM can't support the experience that this hardware requires. Doesn't seem like S60 suffers from the disorganized driver wasteland that Windows Mobile is still in, nor a standard GUI that's stuck in the iron age.

Considering that S60 uses all the open-source software and APIs UNIX/Linux/BSDs use, it's strange it hasn't broken out more in popularity and power apps than it has.

Add a keyboard, and even the latest MWC WM phones begin to look stone-age.

Edited February 17, 2009 by NuShrike

[Guest Menneisyys]

Add a keyboard, and even the latest MWC WM phones begin to look stone-age.

They already are - except for the TG01, I think :(

[Guest vennerr93]

One company (Htc or Samsung etc) could make the best phone with ALL the gadgets and storage space but ... they dont want to they will make slightly worse ones now and get your money then make the best ones. and then more new things will come around and it happens again.

[Guest jamesjames_]

One company (Htc or Samsung etc) could make the best phone with ALL the gadgets and storage space but ... they dont want to they will make slightly worse ones now and get your money then make the best ones. and then more new things will come around and it happens again.

At the moment only Samsung are capable of that. HTC devices sux when it comes to Camera, audio and video playback, integrated memory etc. The problem is they can't make all these things work perfectly under WM. And there will always be newer more ''perfect'' devices.

Btw the new Omnia is using OMAP3, which is really good to hear. And I wondered how did they manage to play video@3mbps without any dropped frames...

[Guest Menneisyys]

At the moment only Samsung are capable of that. HTC devices sux when it comes to Camera, audio and video playback, integrated memory etc. The problem is they can't make all these things work perfectly under WM. And there will always be newer more ''perfect'' devices.

Btw the new Omnia is using OMAP3, which is really good to hear. And I wondered how did they manage to play video@3mbps without any dropped frames...

The Samsung rep I talked to stated it has a dedicated H.264 decoder chip. However, I haven't seen any *real* (read: H.264, not just the one, which might only be M-JPEG, produced by the built-in camera) 720p content played back on the phone.

[Guest xSacha]

The Samsung rep I talked to stated it has a dedicated H.264 decoder chip. However, I haven't seen any *real* (read: H.264, not just the one, which might only be M-JPEG, produced by the built-in camera) 720p content played back on the phone.

There's a video on youtube of it playing back HD content.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RA8z_9X2fQ

By the way I have a Nokia 5800 that uses the same OS this one will be using, S60v5. It is a great OS and, for its purpose, much better than Windows Mobile! I have a Samsung i780 with WinMo 6.1 too. This Nokia had some bugs (granted it was first-gen S50v5 and still unreleased in developed nations) but latest firmware seems to have removed the bugs and made the system much faster and responsive.

Edited February 19, 2009 by xSacha

[Guest NuShrike]

Btw the new Omnia is using OMAP3, which is really good to hear. And I wondered how did they manage to play video@3mbps without any dropped frames...

I'm reading that the demos shown @ MWC were around 8Mbps, and the Samsung engineers haven't figured out what the upper limit is yet! That's implies custom hardware and doesn't even account for the TI DSP, ARM NEON simd hardware of the cpu (leaps above WMMX and XScale of the current Omnia), and the raw FPU of the cpu also.

Using OMAP3 is the ticket out of the dark ages steps backward of the last couple phone generations from H/Q. I can understand why this much power would be wasted (read underutilized) on Windows Mobile.

Edited February 19, 2009 by NuShrike