My 30 days with Storm is coming up... Should I Omnia?

[Guest whitj]

Hey guys, my first post here, and I apologize if this question has been asked ad infinitum, but I would love to get the other side's opinion.

I grabbed a Storm before I even heard of the Omnia (What a silent release!) and have been frustrated with it ever since. Have had problems with hardware, software, every -ware there is on the phone. Since the omnia released I keep coming back to these forums and learning about it, and loving it more and more. I refuse to buy a standalone digital camera, so having an adequate camera is a must for me (The storm's camera takes about 8 seconds from pressing the button to displaying the image....). Being a college student, email is not quite as necessary as a business user, but I am part of several organizations and their listservs, so my inbox fills up quick! so I have a few questions about the email services on the i910:

1. If I switched from Storm to omnia, is there a seperate charge (other than the 29.99) to get a single email account linked to it for push/poll every hour or so?

2. Can the omnia display embedded images within emails natively? i.e. if I get an email from amazon with pictures throughout it, can i see the images or would I have to visit the webpage version of the email?

3. Everyone has said that Blackberries are King of email, and I don't doubt that. I would like the other side of the issue though. What is it that makes WinMo phones not of the same caliber?

4. I'm very interested in tinkering with my devices, and love that aspect of WinMo. One fear I have is what will happen when I inevitable tick one incorrect box in the registry and brick the phone? How easy is it to 1) screw up the phone, and 2) recover it?

5.Another importance for me is MP3 playing on my phone. Is the adaptor for the 3.5 jack a pain in the butt to deal with all the time? Does it add a lot of bulk?

6. On the storm, you can control Play/pause, Next track, prev track, etc while the phone is locked through various hardware buttons? is this possible on the Omnia?

Sorry for the plethora of questions. I have really enjoyed learning all I have so far from Modaco, and would just like to say Thanks for the help!

[Guest Nost@lgia]

Blackberry - u hire Digital mail(Email) postman

Iphone - Well made arts (U cant hurt it or modify it much)

Windows Mobile - Yeah, is there anything u can NOT do with? but u need to be very very patient.

[Guest devarshi]

I have to warn you, I'm thinking of going the opposite way. I love/hate the Omnia. When it's working trouble-free, I love it, but then it crashes or freezes (at least once daily) and I hate it again. I literally have had to soft-reset every single day I've had it. It sounds like the Storm is a POS too, so I'm thinking of holding on to my NE2 until the BB Niagara comes out in a couple months.

[Guest thetwiztidfreak]

I personally love my omnia even though there are a few problems with it. I have also used the storm and much preffer the omnia.

1. you have the option to set up personaly email accounts at no xtra cost. you also get to set how often you would like you phone to pull the emails. my gmail is pulled every 10mins.

2.

3. Not sure EXATELY what makes the BB's better for email but i know they are supposed to handle email accounts better espically corporate email accounts that have to go through you office servers better than other pda's.

4.I too love the custimazation avaliable with winmo and i have done alot of registry hacks with no problem. but if you were to mess something up in the registry you can just hold the send , end keys down and press the reset button to do a hard reset of the phone which takes everything back to day one.

5. the cord is like a foot long and is a bit of an inconvience but i dont mind dealing with it for everything else this phone is capable of.

6. no when the screen is locked its locked, atleast thats been my expierence.

hoep i help with some of your questions

[Guest whitj]

I personally love my omnia even though there are a few problems with it. I have also used the storm and much preffer the omnia.

1. you have the option to set up personaly email accounts at no xtra cost. you also get to set how often you would like you phone to pull the emails. my gmail is pulled every 10mins.

2.

3. Not sure EXATELY what makes the BB's better for email but i know they are supposed to handle email accounts better espically corporate email accounts that have to go through you office servers better than other pda's.

4.I too love the custimazation avaliable with winmo and i have done alot of registry hacks with no problem. but if you were to mess something up in the registry you can just hold the send , end keys down and press the reset button to do a hard reset of the phone which takes everything back to day one.

5. the cord is like a foot long and is a bit of an inconvience but i dont mind dealing with it for everything else this phone is capable of.

6. no when the screen is locked its locked, atleast thats been my expierence.

hoep i help with some of your questions

Thank you SO much for your responses! told me just what I wanted to know.

To the other poster considering switching from Omnia to Storm, I'd like to share an experience that I had about an hour ago:

I went shopping at BJ's, and stopped by the Verizon kiosk to see if they had a particular accessory I was looking for [my storm]. They didn't have it, so I asked if they had an Omnia to test out. He told me that he wished, because he greatly considered the Omnia an all-around superior device to the Storm.

His comment made me curious, i didn't seem like a sales rep to basically criticize one of their phones- especially their flagship model that has posters surrounding every square inch of the store. Anyways, this sparked a verrry long conversation between us comparing the storm to the omnia, etc. I won't bore you with all the details, but here is the run down (as well as some of my own opinions of the storm from user experience):

1) Main thing he reiterated to me was that since I am interested in the storm, I should look forward to later iterations of it. He said that with how rushed the storm is, it wouldn't be for at least a year to fully iron out all the bugs that plague its OS. Further, with the majority of RiM's efforts being put in simply FIXING existing software, there will be very little effort devoted to developing new softwares, or even making existing software compatible. He PREDICTED that the storm will follow the progression of the iPhone, where the model truly shines in its second or third iteration.

Now from user experience, I can let you know of a few of the grievances I am having with the device, as well as direct you to crackberry.com to check out the central blackberry forum. I've already mentioned how terrible the camera is on the storm, and what really bothers me about it is that I would bet money that this problem won't even be addressed by RIM for a goood long while, since the phone primarily caters to business men/women, the camera function must not be high on their list.

RIM did a great job updating their software for the accelerometer, but this has now led to its own problem. While laying on a tabletop, the screen will periodically flip flop from portrait to landscape, untouched. I desperately would like a fix like WinMo has to place the accelerometer to a button so I can walk around naturally without the thing bugging out on me.

Now I will admit that biggest thing I would miss from the storm if I switched would be the beautiful screen. When browsing, I barely need to zoom in to read text, the resolution is just so crisp that letters become visible VERY quickly. However, thinking about it, I only avoid zooming whenever possible because the POS browser supplied doesn't have a smart zoom function like Opera Mobile has. Which brings up another browser issue: No skyfire, and no plans in the near future for it coming to the storm.... that kinda sucks!

I don't know, I think that after typing all this out I kinda convinced myself to join the WinMo community! In a few days' time I'll be that annoying noob asking how to find the registry :rolleyes: :)

[Guest monsterpt]

I think the most important thing you said was that you like to tweak your devices. That said, I have had a chance to spend time with a storm and honestly realized within the first hour that it was not for me. The amount of customization is miniscule compared to the WinMo devices. I love trying new software and regedits to get the most out of my devices. With the huge storage capacity most of the things I have tried have been done using the storage memory without incident on the omnia. There is the problem of omnia specific language that is limited. See, Samsung did not develop new UI or processes, rather they have adapted the old scroll system software to work with the touchscreen interface.

I chose to stay with Verizon and take the Omnia for the price rather that getting an HTC Touch. I was able to get my Omnia from VZN for 74.00 USD. I had 99.00 credit, 79.00 off and they threw in some extras. The other interesting thing I have found, is that even after 2 software updates for the Storm, the retailers are drooling over the potential for the Omnia. I went home with the Storm and the salesman laughed when I walked back in the door that same afternoon.

Don't count on too much customization right away for the Omnia but I think that diehard users will soon be very satisfied with the device.

[Guest whitj]

Yeah, I had the same feeling as you monsterpt, there just wasn't enough to do on the storm. Mine was set up exactly the same as 4 other friends of mine, simply because there was nothing TO DO with it. Funny thing is that while I was reading these forums and typing my own messages here, I decided to return my storm just in time for Verizon to close =(

Oh well, I'm going to try and stop by Verizon before I start the long drive back to my college town....

A bit off topic, but: I know that blackberry phones have their own centralized forum (crackberry) which is basically the ONLY worthwhile place to go for info on BBs; does WinMo have something similar? if not, would anyone be kind enough to list some of the helpful sites for tweaking guides and a list of fun roms to juice up my soon-to-be Omnia? If this request is against the ToS or anything... I sorry!!!