Still camera: 8
megapixel auto focus
camera with LED
flash, geo-tagging,
face detection,
smile shot, image
stabilizer, Wide
Dynamic Range (WDR),
ISO 1600
Video recording:
HD 720p@24fps,
720x480@30fps, QVGA
time-lapse and
slow-mo video
recording
Connectivity:
Wi-Fi with DLNA
support, Bluetooth
2.0 with A2DP,
standard microUSB
port, GPS receiver
with A-GPS, TV-out
(SD content)
Misc:
Accelerometer for
screen auto rotate
and turn-to-mute,
proximity sensor for
auto screen
turn-off,
magnetometer for
digital compass,
handwriting
recognition, FM
radio with RDS, DivX/XviD
video support,
subtitles support,
virtual 5.1 channel
Dolby surround (on
headphones), web
browser with Flash
video support,
office document
viewer, motion-based
3D games
Battery: 1500
mAh battery
Without going
into too much detail, the Diamond II is good old
Touch HD, but in a new, more streamlined and
pocketable package. Our only niggle with its
design is the touch-sensitive stripe at the foot
of the front fascia. Apparently, HTC wanted
their latest and greatest phone to have a
distinctive feature that would set it apart from
a legion of other candybar-shaped Windows Mobile
devices. However in this case the end doesn’t
quite justify the means – I played around with
it for 10 minutes or so and still couldn’t
figure out how it was supposed to help me,
unlike, say, the navigation wheel found in the
Touch Cruise, where it was tied up with the
communicator’s GPS navigation department.
Top-notch camera
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD packs a 8 megapixel camera unit and given the promising results the Omnia HD achieved in our first preview, we were eager to find out how much progress has been made.
The LED flash might be a disappointment to some but the reason is LED can also be used as a video light. And video is certainly what the phone is really about. We'll get to it in a little while.
The camera key is comfortable enough to work with and the UI has been altered to provide better touch experience. Unlike the first samples, the camera interface is now very comfortable with the most frequently used shortcuts only a tap away.
The range of settings offered by the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is immense: from manual white balance and ISO to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast. Various effects are also at hand as well as face and smile detection.
Video Quality
The quality of the video clips taken with the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD lives up to the high expectations. The videos have splendid resolution and good frame rate and look almost as if taken with a mid-range camcorder. Long range optical zoom and optical image stabilization however are still a major asset of digital camcorders, so the Omnia HD is more suited to competing pocket digicams instead.
The Omnia camcorder interface is identical to the one of the still camera and allows the user to choose between fixed and auto focus for the video. Effects are also available and a gridline can be applied to the viewfinder for easier framing.
Recording time is not exactly limited, the real limit is imposed on the maximum file size for each recording. In this case videos don't get any bigger than 2GB. With 720p recording that means 30-40 minutes of footage.
Music
player
Along with the standard 3.5 mm audio jack, the Omnia HD music features are well complemented by the generous 8 to 16 GB of onboard memory and support for microSDHC cards to at least double this amount.
As expected, the music player is based on the one we've seen in Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The novelty here is the virtual 5.1 channel Dolby Surround, which should dramatically improve the headphones listening experience. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait for a retail Samsung i8910 unit to share our impressions of the feature.
Gallery
Like the video players, the there are two galleries as well. The one is identical to Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. It is is yet another part of the interface that hasn't been drastically changed. Touch friendly and functional it definitely is but we somehow feel more eye-candy could have been offered.
You can scroll pictures by sweeping your finger across the screen when looking at a single photo. Opting between portrait and landscape mode is automatic, thanks to the built-in accelerometer. Unless you have that feature disabled, all you need to do to switch modes is to flip the phone sideways.The gallery screams Samsung - you've seen it. You know it well. It's easy to use and works fine.
Web browser: Flash video and all
Another favorite part of the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is its web browser. It's the same as the one found in Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and shares the same turn ons and offs with it. The only thing the browser omits, given the big capacitive touchscreen, is multi-touch support, which would have made things even better.
The Samsung i8910 web browser has flash support including flash video.
Overall Conclusion:
Samsung
i8910 Omnia HD is
expected to head for the
stores in the second
half of this month and
the price will probably
be somewhere along the
lines of 500 euro.
Expensive it most
definitely is, but it’s
a high tech gadget that
you can take wherever
you go. You can easily
buy yourselves an
HD-recording DSLR
digital camera for that
kind of money, but you
can hardly use that to
make calls or surf the
web.
