Think of it as the Windows Mobile–powered Instinct for trust fund babies. Samsung’s luxury touchscreen phone, the Omnia, is a very expensive unlocked device ($720 with 16GB of storage, $690 with 8GB) that comes with a 5-megapixel camera (with autofocus), GPS, and Wi-Fi. While the Omnia doesn’t offer 3G support in the U.S., it does abroad, and its innovative TouchWiz interface and robust multimedia player make it a seriously good alternative to the HTC Touch Diamond.
Design
Looking like a cross between Samsung’s F-490 and Instinct phones, the Omnia is classy and stylish; it turned many heads during our testing. It measures 4.4 x 2.2 x 0.5 inches, similar to the iPhone’s 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.5 inches. The Omnia has a slick metallic border along its entire exterior, and its large 3.2-inch, 400 x 200-pixel capacitive touchscreen display takes up the majority of the front, leaving room for the Send and End keys on the bottom corners. Between them is a small black pad that acts as the device’s mouse pointer.
On the left of the Omnia is a charging port that doubles as a headset input (Samsung includes a 3.5mm adapter) and a power button is on the top right. On the right is a quick-launch button for the menu or switching to the media player, two volume keys, and a camera button. The back is plastic with a brushed-metal look.
The impressive touchscreen is just a notch below the iPhone in terms of quality: It’s still hard to be dead accurate on Web page link selections without using a stylus, and you need to use force to press icons. Like the iPhone, the Omnia switches to landscape mode when you turn it sideways; however, it’s controlled by software that uses the camera to decide which mode the display should be in, instead of an accelerometer. Switching to landscape mode was a bit sluggish.
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