Sat Nov 07 2009
Frequent readers of this space may recall I frequently dislike PDA cellular phones, especially ones with terrible battery life. I have tested a dozen phones over the years and carried a half-dozen and really liked none of them much.
Now I am in love.
No, really. The Samsung Omnia from Verizon Wireless is just breathtakingly good. It has everything I want in a Smartphone (actually more than I expect) and at about half of the price I expect to pay. It's really the first touch-screen phone I can see myself using for a long time; after an hour with one I shelled out the money and bought it.
The big question you are expecting... is it better than the iPhone? For me, it's just as good. I need a Windows Mobile device (which Apple is never going to be) and something that works seamlessly with Exchange corporate mail. The Omnia is the phone I have been waiting for.
First the good news. It includes Wi-Fi connectivity, something Verizon is rather famous for disabling when it launches a new device. This gives you the best of both worlds when it comes to browsing the Web or using other data features.
Secondly, it has a glorious touch-screen interface with tactile feedback. You can use the device in portrait mode as a phone or landscape mode when reading mail or sending text. I was a confirmed user of a real QWERTY keyboard on my Motorola Q and my Blackberry before that and I wondered if a touch-screen would be my thing but honestly in an hour or two I was hooked. Because it has no slideout keyboard the Omnia is sleek and thin.
The battery life is just great. Even with my Exchange sync set to 15 minutes I get more than two days between charges.
In terms of features, it comes with 8 gigs of on-board storage and accepts mini-SD cards so you can add another 16 gigs, which comes in handy because the phone has a 5 megapixel camera that takes fantastic pictures and pretty decent video. (It even has a mode that senses when the subject is smiling and takes the picture automatically.)
When you reorient the phone from vertical to horizontal the movement is silky smooth (unlike the Blackberry Storm) and offers a great screen to watch video. It's not the highest resolution screen out there but it is quite good.
The downsides would be the screen appears to be plastic rather than glass, which is a plus for weight but a potential for scratching and the lack of a place to stash the included stylus. (Samsung offers you the option to hanging it from the side of the phone like a graduation tassel but I confess it is just getting in the way and I am rarely using it now.)
The pricing on the Omnia is pretty stunning. After rebate with a new 2-year re-up I paid just $99 for the Samsung, which is breathtakingly good under a special deal under way. Even without the deal, the Omnia is a great bargain and highly recommended.
Just remember, you do need to purchase a Verizon data plan.
(James Derk is owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm and a tech columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim@cyberdads.com)
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