the phone

I mentioned last week that I got a new phone. It arrived at my house at some point on Wednesday morning, and thanks to the power of online tracking of my parcel I decided to go home for lunch to open my new toy.

What did I get?

A Samsung i900 Omnia.

I was too lazy to take a photo of my phone...

So why did I choose this over the HTC Touch Diamond?

- Bigger 3.2-inch, 240 x 400 pixel display (compared to 2.8-inch, 480 x 640 pixels)
- Solid build
- Metallic finish on back (as opposed to the fingerprint magnet and oddly shaped Diamond)
- Longer battery life (almost double)
- Faster CPU performance (Diamond's TouchFLO interface is apparently quite laggy)
- microSD card slot (which the Diamond is lacking)
- 16GB of storage memory (compared to 4GB)
- Much better 5 megapixel camera
- TV-out (missing on Diamond)

I couldn't have everything though...

- Touchwiz UI isn't as good as TouchFLO 3D
- Diamond does look nicer, and is smaller and lighter
- Omnia acks a stylus slot
- Diamond has a dedicated graphics chip with 64MB memory

One of my colleagues ordered a Diamond over the weekend, meaning I can do a side-by-side comparison later this week.

So far I'm loving this little beauty, took it on the boat cruise and took some photos until I decided that dancing/singing is difficult to do while also taking photos. Been transferring contacts over, customising it, adding new apps and stuff like that, which is good fun (though can be a little frustrating at times). Nice to be to do stuff on the internet (Gmail, Facebook, Blogger, IM etc) while on the go. Handy when you need to pick someone up and you have to wait for them in the car.

Took it to the beach on Sunday too, which I was a little worried about but the lack of flipping and sliding parts, not to mention lack of buttons in general, means less places that sand can get into. Having no stylus slot is a little annoying though - I dangle it off my phone, and I hate dangling things on my phones (makes me feel like a teenage schoolgirl...), but I don't see any other way without losing stylus after stylus. Also I didn't bother cleaning the screen before putting my screen protector on, so I have the odd particle stuck under the screen protector, though luckily this is only around near the edges anyway. Ah well, I'll probably order a new protector anyway, not that I really need it.

Handwriting recognition is cool, as is the autorotate feature (using the in-built accelerometer). Not really a fan of Windows Mobile though, it really does require the stylus to get around, as some of the buttons and scroll bars you need to hit are pretty small (and I don't really think that I really have big fingers or anything...). I did, however, install SPB Mobile Shell, which I love - I found it to be a lot more finger/thumb friendly, so I don't need the stylus to navigate around. Still working on getting some GPS software installed with turn-by-turn navigation, but until I get that sorted, Google Maps does a decent enough job. It uses data though, but I called Optus the day after I got my phone and set up a $14.95 a month data plan for 200MB of data. Can also use the internet by connecting to Wi-Fi, but can't get that working yet. In terms of internet browsers, I prefer Opera over IE - both are on the phone.

Sound quality is good enough, not much difference to my iPod Nano once I plug in my own headphones. Comes with Windows Media Player and Samsung's own media player too, but I can't seem to find an equilizer, which sucks. Actually, come to think about it, there are a lot of things I can't find. Sometimes I find something, and then can't find it again later. Guess I have to get used to where everything is with Windows Mobile. Threw on a movie (it comes with DivX installed), and it the screen size is great for widescreen movies (so now I can watch Juno when I get bored at some conference or presentation).

Anyway that's all that comes to mind for now. I'm going home.