Samsung
Samsung Omnia II
- Samsung Omnia II
The Samsung Omnia II is a Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional buzz with Samsung’s TouchWiz 2.0 UI. In fact, it’s adamantine to acquisition Windows Mobile beneath because Samsung has so heavily customized the buzz with their own applications, banknote for accepted Windows Mobile applications and the TouchWiz 2.0 home awning with widgets.
The Omnia II, abundant added so than the aboriginal Omnia on Verizon, feels a bit like “smartphone for dummies” at times, and at aboriginal glance you’d be adamantine apprenticed to assumption this isn’t a aerial end Samsung TouchWiz affection phone. But it is absolutely abounding Windows Mobile 6.5 inside, and that agency accomplished MS Exchange support, the Office Mobile apartment and top cleft PIM applications that accompany to Outlook, Exchange and alike Google.
If you’re a adept Windows Mobile user and absolutely adopt Microsoft’s user interface, this isn’t the buzz for you. You can attenuate the backup affairs launcher and the TouchWiz home screen, but you’re still larboard with Samsung’s customized menus, banknote over Windows Mobile applications and a host of Samsung applications meant to acting for WinMo apps (or add to them). In fact, there are a huge cardinal of Samsung applications pre-installed, including their own announcement affairs (MS Word and Notes are still there too), a alive media player, a assemblage converter, business agenda reader, an RSS clairvoyant and more. Verizon’s V Cast apartment is on lath as able-bodied with V Cast Video, V Cast Music with Rhapsody, Song ID, VZ Tones, VZ Mobile Email and Mobile IM. The UI feels at times like too abundant icing on the cake, and it gets in the way of productivity.
The abundance of sometimes bombastic icons and applications may abash novices aloof as abundant as it gets in the way if you’re a Windows Mobile veteran. But we do get the idea: Samsung is adage “who needs a accursed app abundance aback you’ve got all this being pre-installed”.
The 3.7″ 480 x 800 pixel AMOLED blow awning is acceptable the Omnia II’s best agitative feature. It’s huge, it’s abundantly blush saturated and its resolution matches the Windows Mobile HTC Imagio and Blow Pro2 on Verizon. This is a arresting blow screen, which agency you can use your barb or the included silo-loaded stylus for abate UI elements. The Omnia II has an accelerometer and a adjacency sensor that turns off the affectation aback in a alarm to anticipate audacity dialing.
Samsung Moment
- Samsung Moment
Suddenly Android phones are bustling up everywhere (OK, except on AT&T as of this writing): Verizon has the Moto Droid and T-Mobile has three Android phones. The Samsung Moment is Sprint’s additional Android Google OS phone, afterward up on their September 2009 absolution of the actual able HTC Hero. What does the Moment action that the Hero doesn’t? An 800MHz CPU, accouterments QWERTY keyboard and a active AMOLED display. What does the Moment action that no added Android buzz in the US offers to date? That obscenely bright and arresting AMOLED screen. Admitting we apprehend the Samsung Behold 2 on T-Mobile to action an AMOLED affectation (but no keyboard) aback it ships ancient afterwards this year.
The Moment is a boilerplate Android buzz active Google OS 1.5 Cupcake. That agency there are no customizations like HTC Sense begin on the Hero and it’s up to you to adapt the home awning and added aspects of the phone. Not that this is a bad affair aback there are chargeless widgets ample to activate up your home awning and a solid alternative of chargeless and paid apps in the Android Market. At the aforementioned time, this is a fresh buzz yet it runs an earlier OS than the Google OS 1.6 MyTouch 3G on T-Mobile and the OS 2.0 Droid on Verizon. That agency you absence things like added chase from 1.6 and Google Maps with announced aeronautics and built-in MS Exchange accompany from 2.0. As a consolation, Google’s articulation admonition are in beta and aren’t as reliable as Sprint Aeronautics and Samsung has included Moxier’s Exchange ActiveSync band-aid on the Moment.
The Samsung’s specs are good: an 800MHz ARM 11 CPU (previous Android phones went with the ultra-common 528MHz Qualcomm CPU, except the Droid which has a spiffy Cortex CPU), a 3.2″ capacitive blow awning active at the aforementioned 320 x 480 resolution as HTC’s Android phones and the iPhone 3GS, WiFi, a GPS that works with both Google Maps and Sprint Navigation, EV-DO Rev. A, a 3.2MP autofocus camera and Bluetooth with A2DP stereo. Not bad for $179 with a 2 year arrangement afterwards rebates.
In agreement of looks, the Samsung isn’t adult nor is it slim. It’s solid and functional: alarm it the Toyota Camry of phones. There are affluence of Samsung TouchWiz phones that attending agnate (Samsung Rogue, Samsung Impression), so you won’t be different on the advice and telecommunication superhighways but you apperceive you can assurance your ride. Samsung does annihilation to adumbrate that this is a artificial buzz but it doesn’t scream “plastic” like the MyTouch 3G. The downside is that the Moment feels beefy and brickish, admitting it’s actually not huge; rather the architecture isn’t slimming. The smartphone may not be huge but it is large, and that affords a appropriate keyboard that’s more acceptable in agreement of key biking and advance than the Moto Droid. The keys are clicky and grippy and the blueprint is mostly normal. This is a 4 row keyboard with a committed cardinal row and the colossal amplitude key sits in amid the v and b keys. The Fn key nudges in on the left, alive the a key to the appropriate a bit which doesn’t booty all that abundant accepting acclimated to. There’s alone one about-face key (left) and four arrow keys on the appropriate that don’t crave an Fn key press.
