Samsung Omnia i900 with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional

So here we have Samsung's Widget-based Today screen. You can position the widgets anywhere you want, and you can even overlap widgets. To see all available widgets, you tap on the tab you see on the left there...

    ...and from this menu, you can add and remove widgets. The widgets included aren't very useful. Things like an analogue and digital clock, link to Notes and Games, photo slideshow, profile switcher, and play controls for the MP3 player are included. It's missing important widgets like weather, stocks, next calendar appointment, calculator, and a more robust new message notification window (it has one, but it doesn't let you see the status of all of your messages in one glance).

Did I mention you can overlap widgets? Seen in the upper right is the aforementioned new message notification.

Widgets also works in landscape. What's interesting is that when you flip it into landscape, the widget layout you had in portrait is reset, so you can basically have two layouts - one for both orientations.

This is the other Today screen Samsung provides. It has even less utility than does the first one. From here you can access important device functions...

...and add a quick dial list. But again, this Today screen doesn't do anything with weather or next appointment or email notification. So it's back to the default Today screen for me!

    Also from Samsung is this menu screen which is accessible via a hardware button, or a shortcut in the Programs menu. It's a menu that provides access to main programs. I rather have a shortcut on the Today screen to get to a program. I never liked the idea of having to go through multiple screens to get to a program that could be launched from the Today screen.

The second pane, which is accessible with a left to right finger swipe, allows you to drag and drop programs from the left menu, and customize your own shortcut panel.

    I really like the Phonebook application form Samsung. This is one of the few places you can flick scroll on the device. Each entry is finger-friendly; you can quickly get to a particular letter, or quickly filter by category. You can also search.

The Call Log screen also takes on this format.

And this is what the phone keypad looks like, which is also finger-friendly.

And when you're on a call, the screen is deactivated to avoid accidental key presses.

    Here we are in the Programs menu. The longer 400 pixel screen really allows a lot of icons to show on the screen at once. Sadly, you cannot flick-scroll the Programs menu, so you have to drag the scroll bars. The interesting entries we see here are: FM radio, Digital Frame, and Google Launcher. We'll go through those now. But before we do - if we rotate the device, the screen will automatically switch to landscape...

...and we'll get this.

And while we're in this view, I should note that all soft key menus throughout the operating system are large and finger-friendly. Nice.

To use the FM radio, you must have your headset connected. The signal strength was about as good as you can expect with a WinMo phone having radio - it was adequate but not great. From here you can enter radio presets.

And this is the Google launcher program which is bit pointless. Typing in this box will launch PIE to do a Google query. Clicking on Mail will launch GMail in PIE, and Maps will take you to the Maps program.

...which, by the way, looks excellent on the Omnia's WQVGA screen.

And while we're on third party apps - Windows Live Search renders perfectly on the Omnia...

...as does Pocket Informant.

The Digital Picture Frame application is pretty neat. The idea is that you can use the Omnia as a digital picture frame by having it display the time, date, and a calendar, all while it cycles through your pictures in the background.

I think Samsung envisions you getting back home after work and throwing the Omnia on your desk with this program running for ambiance. It's not useful enough for me...

...though there are quite a few options if you're interested in using it.

    Let's proceed downward in the Programs menu. Here we see some other interesting entries: Podcasts, RSS Reader, Shozu, Smart Converter, Streaming Player, TV-Out viewer (which I was unable to test because my unit didn't come with the right adapters), Task Switcher, Touch Player, and Video Editor. Wow, that's a lot! Let's go through them now...

This is the main menu of the Podcasts application.

If you're into Podcasts, you can use your Omnia to manage them.

The RSS reader on the Omnia was easy to use...

...and I was quickly able to add the pocketnow.com RSS feed.

Shozu is a service that allows you to share content from your phone with online services like YouTube, Facebook, flickr, and others.

The Smart Converter is a well-made application that lets you make various conversions. It makes the conversions as you type.

The Streaming Player will allow you to visit mobile YouTube (m.youtube.com) and watch streaming content on your Omnia.

This is the Windows Media Player alternative, called Touch Player, which is a fast and easy to use multimedia player.

All of the menus are finger-friendly, and you can flick-scroll to navigate.

    What you see on the bottom half of the screen is the Task Switcher, which is accessible by swiping your finger from the bottom of the screen to the middle, or through the Programs list. The Task Switcher allows you to access your play controls for the Touch Player from any screen, or toggle between programs, kind of like the Alt-Tab menu in Windows. It's funny that even as OEMs are trying to make Windows Mobile not "feel" like Windows on the desktop, they add things like the task switcher which is quite reminiscent of Windows.

And then there is a video editor that is not unlike Windows Movie Maker...

But oddly, it doesn't let you manipulate video that you've taken with the Omnia.

This part of the Video Editor lets you make a slideshow and export it as an MP4 video.

Included on the Omnia is Office Mobile 2007 with Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, and Word.

And while we're talking about productivity, Samsung gives you three onscreen keyboards. All of them feature predictive text entry and spelling assistance. This first one is the full QWERTY.

And then we have a SureType-style, which has larger buttons.

...and finally we have a T9-style pad, which is probably the best bet for those with large fingers, or those that are especially acclimated to this keypad layout.

And I should mention that all of these keyboards display nicely in landscape. In landscape, the space key is placed awkwardly to the right.

Here's the full list of keyboard options. From here, we can get into the options for the Samsung keyboards...

...which gives you control on the word completion, and how quickly you will get suggestions.

Moving on from the keyboards...using the File Viewer, you can view PDFs in their full glory with zoom/pan functionality.

Since Pocket IE is still horrible, Samsung includes a full version of Opera Mobile 9.5 - the best of the best in terms of mobile browsers.

    With flash support, plus support for the normal web standards, Opera Mobile 9.5 is a true desktop-grade mobile browser. The pages rendered smoothly on the Omnia. You double tap to get closer to a column of text, you slide your finger to pan around on the page. It's great.

    A big problem though...when you're entering a new URL, the autocomplete of the keyboard does not turn off. So when I'm trying to type "pocketnow.com" into the address bar, it wants to correct me with "pocketbook." Now, you can turn off the autocomplete, but not in less than 5 different menus. The autocomplete should be suppressed here!

On the next page, we'll cover all of the interesting settings of the Omnia, plus take a look at how well the 5MP camera performs.