Nokia N96 vs Samsung Omnia?

[Guest Dino355]

I've been looking forward to an upgrade for some time now and the day is finally here.

I've been on Orange since May 2000 and whilst I'm perfectly happy with them I'm still peeved that I can't get mobile reception in my office after 3 years of working here so it's time to say bye bye.

Ideally I'd like to go onto the 02 network but they don't sell the N96 or the Omnia direct :lol: You can only get these phones through 3rd party suppliers like dialaphone, phones4u or CPW and none of them offer the same call plans as you can get direct with the Network.

So that leaves me one option (I won't consider T-Mobile or 3) which is Vodaphone whose plans look fairly good value AND have the added benefit of actually selling the phones direct and at a good price.

What I'm looking for in a phone:

good quality camera

email

good internet browsing experience

video playback

mp3

reliability

Given that I've had an N95 before I really did not like the browsing experience on it (actually I hated it) and I'm wondering if the new N96 is actually any better? I've tried the Nokia E71 using Opera and loved it - can Opera be used on the N96?

As for the Samsung that wasn't even a contender until today when I went to the local phone shop and the Samsung rep just happened to be there and kindly showed me his Omnia and allowed me to try it out at my leisure. First impressions were good, I liked the features although the touch screen was a little fiddly to use at first.

I used to be big on Orange SPVs having owned many of them over the years since the release of the original. Now I know smartphones have come a long way since then but I have a feeling that the Omnia (being a Windows phone) may possibly annoy me as they aren't quite as simple to use as more traditional phones

On the flipside the N96 (if anything like the N95) will be relatively simple to use but I'm worried it will suffer from the same annoying bugs that the N95 had.

One more thing - I had previously considered the soon to be released Sony Ericsson C905 but that's not a smartphone either is it? I know some people have aleady managed to try one of these out on pre-release so it would be nice to know what it's like.

Opinions please guys?

Thanks

Dino :D