Samsung Omnia SGH I-900 Windows Mobile Review
So far in my experience of using this Samsung Omnia with Windows Mobile 6.1 on it, it functions exactly the same as Vista on my PC. IT really is a mini PC, you've got Microsoft office mobile with Word, Excel and Onenote, you've got Internet Explorer and Opera, theres the whole windows live service which allows you to check out spaces and Messenger. This isn't mobile messenger either when you're logged on it's the full on messenger, you can play all the games with people and it doesn't come up with any of the mobile messenger or Ebuddy stuff. We have Windows Media player as well with the ability to create playlists and sync with Windows Media on your Home PC.
All the Email stuff is full on, you can send/receive organise emails into folders, when you sync all your emails from your PC you can read the full HTML ones aswell. It comes with Flashlite 2 or 3.1 which allows you to check out websites with all their content, this means youtube and fully flash sites. I've been using Word alot to do some light editing of documents such as this one I'm writing now and some of my sales letters. I've been using the spreadsheets to check out and manage some light stock handling and quick equations.
The wireless support is fantastic, there is not one router I've come across yet which has given me any problems with connections apart from security codes of course. When it is connected to the router it detects it as a pc, so you never have any problems with firewalls or port routing etc.
It's up there Games wise too, it uses a cut down version of Direct X, not sure which one or if it's specially made, but you get full 3d graphics, reflections, some really good physics support, this can be seen in a game called mini-dogfight in which the planes fly very well and as expected. The texture resolutions seem pretty good and clear. Of course full support is phone dependant. For serious game fans you can run DOS games with DOSBOX, someone has emulated it very well, there's the usual range of SNES and NES Emulators, I've also seen videos on YouTube of people running PS1 games pretty well, which leads me to believe there's an N64 emulator out there as well...Super smash bros. On your mobile anyone?? I have yet to confirm this but I'll have a good look and let you know.
Probably one of the best things I've seen Windows Mobile do is fully Emulate the Iphone...now that's saying something as to the power of this system, at the moment I think the only limitations are those of the Hardware currently on the market but stay alert because there is a Windows mobile 7 coming out shortly along side the official Windows 7, and this of course requires better more powerful handsets.
On some phones there's DivX VOD support, now many of you probably don't know what this is, but it's a pretty big deal, I'm not entirely sure myself to be honest, but I know I can and have played DivX Movies and TV shows, which are usually in HD so you get fantastic video quality especially if your phone has a good screen. Theres GPS support, which is again a phone dependant feature but it's very accurate, and I'm quite confident you could easily use it to navigate across the country.
Theres a good range of power saving features to accompany it, just like on your laptop, theres screen brightness Wi-Fi saving, CPU scaling. The coolest thing I've Found with Power Saving has to be it will turn the phone aerial off when your seriously low meaning you can stretch out the battery to it's extreme. This means you can finish that important text or email then quickly blip the phone back on to send it. Even if the €phone€ side is off, you still have full functionality of the phone/Operating system, you can read emails, saved web pages etc.
The real party piece and head turner has to be the connected home feature. If you have one of those new top end hi-fi systems or a wireless network, you can stream music, videos and photos to your computer and from your computer or stream the music straight off your phone to the speakers. It's near limitless. With a bit of clever nerdiness you can setup a home server which wil allow you to grab your content or files from anywhere in the world and download them straight to your phone.
While alot of people are going to disagree, it can't be denied that Windows Mobile 6.1 is leaps and bounds ahead of the OSX on the Iphone, This is shown by the fact it can emulate it very well. HOWEVER it's not nearly as quick, good looking and intuitive as Apples Fantastic Iphone. For the masses and people that aren't exactly technical the Iphone is way better, but for business people and techy software people Windows still holds the high ground there, and yes there is Viruses for Windows Mobile and it screwed mine up a short while ago, but fortunately I knew how to reflash. If this happened to anyone else they probably would've been in a state and have to send their phone off to Samsung, probably with a nice price on top of it all.
At the end of the day though its down to personal preference. I love my Omnia with Windows Mobile and I certainly wouldn't complain if I got an Iphone instead-Which I very nearly almost did. But as Im a bit of a techy geek, I love the functionality and flexibility of Windows. This very same functionality and flexibility has been carried over very well into windows mobile.
One crucial thing you MUST bare in mind though, while Windows Mobile is very Capable, some of it's features are limited by the handset capabilities, a good example is the games and GPS, also there is a few variations between the touch screen version and the normal keypad version. But you cant go wrong either way.
All the Email stuff is full on, you can send/receive organise emails into folders, when you sync all your emails from your PC you can read the full HTML ones aswell. It comes with Flashlite 2 or 3.1 which allows you to check out websites with all their content, this means youtube and fully flash sites. I've been using Word alot to do some light editing of documents such as this one I'm writing now and some of my sales letters. I've been using the spreadsheets to check out and manage some light stock handling and quick equations.
The wireless support is fantastic, there is not one router I've come across yet which has given me any problems with connections apart from security codes of course. When it is connected to the router it detects it as a pc, so you never have any problems with firewalls or port routing etc.
It's up there Games wise too, it uses a cut down version of Direct X, not sure which one or if it's specially made, but you get full 3d graphics, reflections, some really good physics support, this can be seen in a game called mini-dogfight in which the planes fly very well and as expected. The texture resolutions seem pretty good and clear. Of course full support is phone dependant. For serious game fans you can run DOS games with DOSBOX, someone has emulated it very well, there's the usual range of SNES and NES Emulators, I've also seen videos on YouTube of people running PS1 games pretty well, which leads me to believe there's an N64 emulator out there as well...Super smash bros. On your mobile anyone?? I have yet to confirm this but I'll have a good look and let you know.
Probably one of the best things I've seen Windows Mobile do is fully Emulate the Iphone...now that's saying something as to the power of this system, at the moment I think the only limitations are those of the Hardware currently on the market but stay alert because there is a Windows mobile 7 coming out shortly along side the official Windows 7, and this of course requires better more powerful handsets.
On some phones there's DivX VOD support, now many of you probably don't know what this is, but it's a pretty big deal, I'm not entirely sure myself to be honest, but I know I can and have played DivX Movies and TV shows, which are usually in HD so you get fantastic video quality especially if your phone has a good screen. Theres GPS support, which is again a phone dependant feature but it's very accurate, and I'm quite confident you could easily use it to navigate across the country.
Theres a good range of power saving features to accompany it, just like on your laptop, theres screen brightness Wi-Fi saving, CPU scaling. The coolest thing I've Found with Power Saving has to be it will turn the phone aerial off when your seriously low meaning you can stretch out the battery to it's extreme. This means you can finish that important text or email then quickly blip the phone back on to send it. Even if the €phone€ side is off, you still have full functionality of the phone/Operating system, you can read emails, saved web pages etc.
The real party piece and head turner has to be the connected home feature. If you have one of those new top end hi-fi systems or a wireless network, you can stream music, videos and photos to your computer and from your computer or stream the music straight off your phone to the speakers. It's near limitless. With a bit of clever nerdiness you can setup a home server which wil allow you to grab your content or files from anywhere in the world and download them straight to your phone.
While alot of people are going to disagree, it can't be denied that Windows Mobile 6.1 is leaps and bounds ahead of the OSX on the Iphone, This is shown by the fact it can emulate it very well. HOWEVER it's not nearly as quick, good looking and intuitive as Apples Fantastic Iphone. For the masses and people that aren't exactly technical the Iphone is way better, but for business people and techy software people Windows still holds the high ground there, and yes there is Viruses for Windows Mobile and it screwed mine up a short while ago, but fortunately I knew how to reflash. If this happened to anyone else they probably would've been in a state and have to send their phone off to Samsung, probably with a nice price on top of it all.
At the end of the day though its down to personal preference. I love my Omnia with Windows Mobile and I certainly wouldn't complain if I got an Iphone instead-Which I very nearly almost did. But as Im a bit of a techy geek, I love the functionality and flexibility of Windows. This very same functionality and flexibility has been carried over very well into windows mobile.
One crucial thing you MUST bare in mind though, while Windows Mobile is very Capable, some of it's features are limited by the handset capabilities, a good example is the games and GPS, also there is a few variations between the touch screen version and the normal keypad version. But you cant go wrong either way.
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