Like others, I have a concern about a “non-standard” screen and future compatibility. Unfortunately, many reiews discuss these phones latest-greatest feature set, but stop short of real world uselfulness. Often they are written by people who are only looking for the coolest features. The screen on the Omnia is a case in point. Many of us business users live and die by these phones. For example, how does Omnia perform in the sunlight? Most people need to be able to glance at the screen in a car…ie sunlight! Some screens like the early Treo’s, offer transreflective screens that are bright when lit, but also easy to read in the sun. Another area is syncing data. How well does the Omnia sync? Is it reliable? Can I do a backup easily? How is the battery life REALLY, when used by a business professional rather than playing games? How many times did the phone crash during the review? Was it easy to reset? Stability and program responsiveness, screen readability, and data prtoection can effect our ability to do our jobs.

I am going to VZW tomorrow to look closely at the Storm, Omnia, and TouchPro. But, I will have to trust reviews like yours to make my ultimate decision because there is no way to cover all the functuionality in 30 days. Please keep this in mind.

Samsung definitely made a controversial decision by making the Omnia with a WQVGA screen (240×400). It’s much too long in my opinion. So much so that some of my programs crash upon loading. Skype, for example was made for more conventional Windows Mobile screen sizes, and often drops calls or just doesn’t start at all, requiring a soft reset. Though some would think that the extra wide screen on the Omnia provides for a better wide-screen divx movie experience, the truth is, there’s another drawback. The colors are limited to only 65k. So, what I initially thought were video artefacts on in the video were actually the limitations of Omnia.

Web pages, on the other hand, look great. The broswer interface is very similiar to that of the Wii’s (I guess because both are made by Opera). Zooming in and out isn’t exactly intuitive, but after a little learning, my browsing experience is pretty on par with other mobile devices, if not much better because of the extra-wide screen. The color limitation doesn’t affect the browsing experience much.

http://www.patricksoon.blogspot.com

Todd

Can you help me? I have one question. It´s related with the screen resolution- Does the screen have a good resolution to watch videos and web pages or there´s a long walk to go for samsung in that matter?

Thank you, and keep up with the good work.