Lost my Samsung Omnia - and I am surprised, I am not that sad at all

[Guest reto_cast]

Dear all

My wife had bought me the Omnia because she just happened to be near the shop that got the very first batch of Omnias for Thailand. After having used it for 3 months, I lost it. Surprisingly I was not too sad.

While I liked the features of the phone, I could never really get accustomed to the sluggish and inconsistent interface. Just before I lost my phone I had checked it by the Samsung service center. I could not believe that my phone's battery went flat after 3 hours continuous GPRS internet surfing.

The service center mentioned that a NEW BIGGER battery for the Omnia is in the works and will be available soon. Bigger then the current 1440 mAh

I am not getting an Omnia again. I will be waiting for Windows Mobile 7 and then check what's new. Now I am back to the Nokia N73... well messaging and making calls is definitely easier then on the Omnia B)

Best regards

Reto

[Guest mobilehappy]

I could never really get accustomed to the sluggish and inconsistent interface.

Then i guess you had not updated the ROM version.

The latest roms are very fast and responsive with great screen sensitivity. (DTHJ9)

[Guest reto_cast]

Thanks, I had actually upgraded my ROM using Paul's guide. Maybe the GPRS network here requires higher signal strenght...

[Guest reto_cast]

Some more information about the features that I did not like on the Omnia:

1) Making a phone call (press Phone) was very difficult for me (I am wearing reading glasses and using the loupe/volume buttons took too long). Most of the time I opened the contacts but then I noticed that if I wanted to scroll with the optical mouse, it would rather select and open a contact instead of flick scroll the list down.

2) I think there is a bug in the contacts, whenever I flick scrolled the contacts down, I was not able to select a contact eg. starting with "M", but the contacts list jumped to the top again. I finally ended up using the search function every time.

3) When I was using the Omnia, I was constantly comparing its interface (not the functions) with my wife's iPhone. I felt that the interface of the iPhone was consistent and finger friendly. On the Omnia, I often ended up with 3 mm wide tiny scroll bars or tabs. In my opinion, there should be a stylus slot in the phone, because the Omnia is not "finger only"

4) Messaging was kind of "messy" with the conversations rather then messages. This is a WM 6.1 shortcoming I know, but it sure made messaging a bit tricky at times

5) Opera Mobile on a relatively slow GPRS connection made browsing a rocky ride. I often opened the same websites on the iPhone and the Omnia at the same time. E.g. IMDb.com to check out movies. The Opera Mobile browser would often jump to the top or to the end or loose the magnification if a page was not fully loaded yet. The Safari mobile browser on the iPhone was a much smoother ride.

6) I also noticed that the Opera Mobile browser seemed to have troubles with Java scripting and server dialogs. I run a rather large watch forum where we allow forumners to upload pictures directly from the hard disk. That file attachment is controlled by JS. My Omnia/Opera Mobile would in 90% of the cases display "Error, connection closed by remote server". Never had a problem with it on Symbian though.

7) Web browsing was OK, IF you waited for a page to load. Also I noticed that it was often much better to open a link in a new tab rather then to wait until that orange color showed up on the page telling you that a link had been selected.

8) For me the biggest pet peeve was that the Omnia interface was so inconsistent. But this is probably not the fault of Samsung, it's rather how Windows Mobile 6.1 is designed. I only hope they get this right in WM 7. Sometimes you get really finger friendly big boxes to click, and then suddenly you were in those microscopic controls again. Once you use the phone often (I have been heavily using my phone for three months) you will know exactly when you need the stylus. I always carried mine in the small box of my foldable reading glasses.

What I miss about my Omnia:

1) It's a great "toy" to play with. We have very bad traffic here in Bangkok, Thailand. So having the Omnia to play with, was a real entertaining time killer.

2) I liked the page rendering of the Opera Mobile browser, except that one would not really know whether a link was selected or not until the page was fully loaded

3) Connecting the phone to the home WiFi was easy and straight forward. Also the Omnia had no problems to display our Apartment web cam (see attached)

My (and please, I do not want to spoil your joy of owning the Omnia) personal facit is this: as an engineer and tinkerer, I really loved the Omnia. It's feature packed, the included map of Thailand worked great with the GPS in the car, that was my biggest surprise that they actually managed to map the messy infrastructure of Bangkok.

I will soon replace the Omnia with a touch screen GPS phone. However my new phone has to offer me a really easy to use interface for phone/texting/alarm clock functions.

PS I used "Da Man's" (Paul's) guide to upgrade my ROM three times, so I was always on the latest OS.

[Guest reto_cast]

Our appartment camera on the Omnia (it's an inexpensive Linksys Webcam). And I always use a mobile phone to look after my forum when on the road. My watch forum on the Omnia.