Screen

The Omnia's 3.2-inch full touch screen is brilliant and colorful, and showcases the TouchWiz user interface. At 240 x 400 px, the resolution looks good, although it is actually lower than the G1 and iPhone 3G screens which both surpass the Omnia with 320 x 480 px.

The Omnia supports supports 65K-colors, on par with the T-Mobile G1, but short of the iPhone 3G which supports 262K-colors.

With only a couple of buttons on the face, Samsung expects users to navigate almost exclusively with the touch screen -- as they would with the iPhone. However, the Omnia's touch screen often disappointed with its slow response to selections. Wrong text or commands were frequently selected as a result.

For example, it sometimes took several tries with a finger touch or the stylus, to use the "X" to close out of applications. The animation during the screen orientation change from portrait to landscape and vice versa -- while visually impressive-seemed to waste time.

In addition to standard touch screen features, Samsung has thrown in some innovative new technology to help the Omnia stand out among competitors. The haptic feedback, a slight vibration to confirm the user's selection, is a nice feature.

An accelerometer allows users to change the screen orientation from portrait to landscape and vice versa. It seems to be increasingly a standard feature on touch screen handsets. But Omnia also uses the accelerometer in a unique way to help users who want a quick option to silence an incoming call or other sounds, by allowing users to select an "etiquette" function that mutes the phone when it is turned face down.

Audio

Sound on the Omnia is crisp and -- unlike the G1 -- the top volume setting produces full, loud audio free of static.

Between the podcast application and the "Touch Player" application to play audio and video files, the handset gives users easy touch access to a broader range of audio than many handsets currently on the market. The smartphone also comes loaded with Windows Media Player, and supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA and WAV audio formats.

Users can program up to six favorite channels on the FM Radio, which can be accessed from the widget bar on the home screen. A 3.5mm headset adapter must be plugged into the phone for the radio to work, since the attachment has the radio antenna.

Users who want to plug in a headset will need this adapter anyway, since the Omnia lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack. The lack of a headphone jack seems to be a common problem on many handsets currently on the market, and T-Mobile also had to include an adapter and headphones with the G1. The result is that users end up with two separate parts and a lot of cords just to listen to the Omnia.

Messaging

As mentioned earlier, text messaging and any other actions requiring typing were challenging at best due to the cramped touch screen keyboard on the Omnia. As one of the disappointments, the Omnia comes nowhere near the texting ease as on the iPhone's larger keypad or the G1's slide out keyboard.

At times, it was nearly impossible to select the "delete" key on the Omnia to fix errors caused by typing mishaps.

Regardless, the Omnia supports push email, and POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP email accounts. Users can receive corporate email in real time by syncing with their company's server, with Microsoft Exchange. The handset also comes loaded with Microsoft Outlook.

For instant messaging, the Omnia supports AOL, Windows Live and Yahoo!

While Samsung deserves credit for whittling the Omnia down to the thinness of an iPhone, users for whom text messaging and email are top priority might have problems with the tiny QWERTY keyboard. The T-Mobile G1, while slightly thicker, provides a full slide-out keyboard. The Omnia's keyboard is on a touch screen so users cannot dial by touch without looking at the screen. In addition, the keys are so tiny that despite the fairly responsive screen, it was challenging to select the correct keys.

As a result, the stylus might be necessary for many users to be able to type, which is unfortunate on such an attractive touch screen handset. This is another example of where Apple's user interface for the iPhone still comes out ahead of competitors, because the larger keys and other design features work to make the touch screen convenient and highly navigable for users.

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