• Samsung Omnia HD: First Impressions

    Samsung Omnia HD: First Impressions

    Prasad Naik, Aug 24, 2009 1730 hrs IST

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Software




The Omnia HD runs on Symbian S60 5th Edition. The OS is similar to the one found on Nokia 5800 XpressMusic or the Nokia N97, but it also has Samsung's TouchWiz UI with widgets on the home screen. The widgets can be managed from a slide-out tray on the left. You get three home screens, so you don't have to worry about overcrowding a single screen, but can instead spread out your widgets as you want.



The main menu is basically the same as on the 5800 or the N97. Samsung has a couple of its own applications but overall it is the same old S60 5th Edition. Now this is a good and a bad thing. Good because technically it is pretty powerful with support for third party software and true multitasking, plus for people who are fans of or familiar with older S60 versions, will find themselves at home here.



 



Bad because of all the touchscreen OSs, the S60 5th Edition has possibly one of the clumsiest UI, mostly because it wasn't built from grounds up to be one, but only as a touchscreen layer over the standard S60 3rd edition. Things like having to double tap to select in some screens and single tap elsewhere, and lack of flick scrolling makes it annoying at times. It'll certainly take a while to get used to the idiosyncrasies.



The UI on our phone was pretty fast and responsive and there wasn't any particular lagging observed. The problem however was with some applications such as the browser or the settings app crashing at times for no apparent reason. The browser in particular was misbehaving the most with pages not loading properly and scrolling around was a bit slow as well. The Wi-Fi would also occasionally break connection and had to be reconnected. It seems the phone will need a firmware update or two before it can work the way it is supposed to. That however won't solve the problems that are native to S60 5th Edition.




 

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Discussion Board
(5) Comments
shashank
,ghaziabad, on Nov 24, 2009 05:44 PM
dont buy it india, i have and i regret it ...it freezes and apparently samsung india doenot know how to make it allright
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munna
,delhi, on Sep 29, 2009 06:07 PM
friends told me a samsung is launching a new youth phone..anybody know the details
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Anupam C
,Dehradun, on Aug 27, 2009 04:05 PM
Omnia HD records in 1280 X 720 resolution (720p), not 1280 X 800. Perhaps it may record videos in D1 (720 X 480) without any jerkiness.
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avinash
,mumbai, on Aug 26, 2009 07:16 AM
the omnia pro 7630 is the one to get. when does it reach India ?
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Rahul Srinivas
,Mumbai, on Aug 24, 2009 08:41 PM
Prasad, having used the same phone with a different firmware, I see that the current one has lots of issues. So, half of the issues mentioned here (Wi-Fi, Video Recording mainly) have been induced by the new firmware we installed just before we did this first look. I was in fact surprised you faced issues with the videos - mainly because I had recorded quite few of them prior to the update and they were of acceptable quality. Another thing I noticed is that the browser misbehaving with regular consistency. Hangs for no apparent reason. So, half of the issues WILL be resolved once we have a stable firmware update. Those who're reading this, this first look was done on a firmware we "induced" forcibly. Once we have a stable version, the results would be better.
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