Camera

One feature on the Omnia that sets it apart from other touch screen handsets is its 5.0-megapixel camera, which takes higher resolution photos and video than most other smartphone cameras -- beautifully capturing realistic color and light.

By contrast, the iPhone 3G has a 2.0-megapixel camera and the T-Mobile G1 has a 3.2 mega-pixel camera.

The Omnia camera offers an LED flash, auto-focus and image stabilizer functions, which greatly contributed to clean, sharp images. Some bonus capabilities includes smile detection, which allows the camera to detect when subjects are smiling and then trigger a photo, and a wide range of photo editing options.

These include 15 different environment modes that range from "candlelight," to "fireworks" to "text"; six different photo file sizes; white balance; and brightness. There are also panorama and continuous shooting modes, as well as a timer. Photos can also be geotagged.

In video mode, which is accessed by touching the camera icon when the Omnia is in camera mode, there are fewer editing options but still an impressive amount for a handset.

There are three recording modes, from "normal" to "slow," and three file sizes. Audio can be turned off and on, white balance can be adjusted, and auto-focus and brightness can also be fine tuned.

Video quality on the Omnia was also superb, at least in comparison to some other touch screen phones currently on the market. The iPhone camera has outperformed many other smartphone cameras, even some with higher resolution cameras, but in this case the Omnia camera provides superior still shots and video. One of the best aspects of this camera is its ability to handle lighting well.

Basic Features

The Omnia comes loaded with Windows Mobile 6.1 with Microsoft PowerPoint Mobile, Excel Mobile and Word Mobile, as well as Outlook so users can send receive email and keep track of appointments.

Its TouchWiz user interface is overlaid to make navigation more convenient and highlight the phone's touch screen capabilities. The home screen, which Samsung calls the "Today" screen, features a convenient widget bar on the left side of the screen.

Widgets can be moved around with the touch and swipe of a finger. To open an application, users can pull the widget to the right onto the main screen, and tap it. A tab allows users to minimize the widget bar with a finger swipe to the left, or pull it out with a swipe to the right.

The widgets that come loaded on the side bar from Verizon include analog, digital and world clocks, a "notifier" to alert users when they receive new emails or other messages, games, a calendar, Touch Player music and video player, FM radio, phone book and Opera browser. The calendar widget integrates with the user's Outlook calendar.

The "Today" screen also features a Microsoft Windows "Start" menu on the upper left side of the screen, and a "Main Menu" in the lower right corner which brings up a colorful grid of icons for applications, programs and other items. This menu is similar to the layout featured on the Apple iPhone, the T-Mobile G1 and the RIM BlackBerry Storm, although the Samsung TouchWiz has a white background which does not set off the colorful icons as much as the black background on the G1 and iPhone.

Samsung threw some animation into the TouchWiz user interface to highlight the transition from one screen orientation to another, which adds to the phone's slick appearance but slows things down when users are in a hurry. There are several options to customize how the screen flips, and some appeared to change the orientation more quickly than others.

Other applications loaded on the Omnia include FM Radio, a program to support podcasts, Smart Reader to take photos of documents and convert them into a text document, a clock and alarm that includes an option for "anniversary day," and an RSS Reader, among many things.

The visual appearance of the user interface and overall responsiveness of the Omnia were a cut above the RIM BlackBerry Storm. The major downside of the Omnia was that it could be frustratingly slow at times, for example when it took multiple finger touches and swipes to move a widget back onto the bar on the left side of the "Today" screen.

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