iPhone 3G vs Samsung Omnia

A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely. - Pam Brown

In a rare occasion of the galaxy, I found myself with two very impressive phone. (It is rare since I'm not a handphone enthusiast, I used my phone until they die on me...only then I get a new one). But this week I had my hand on 2 quite hype of the momen phone Apple iPhone 3G and Samsung Omnia.

Both are touch phones meaning there are no visible keypad for you to use, although Omnia does have a very good optical mouse function you can use to navigate the phone. As far as touch functions goes....hands down to Apple Iphone, it has a very sensitive, easy to use and very swift and smooth navigation. (Other phone have a few miles to go before they can claim that they have iPhone easy touch functionality)

Not saying that Omnia touch function was bad, but it is certainly a bit difficult to manuvoure.
Maybe as Omnia works on Windows Mobile platform, it works better with a stylus (the very reason why I think Samsung bundle it together with the phone). To my experience, I ussually needs both hands to use Omnia, bad for driving and while on the go.

But everything is not lost for Omnia maybe in the functionality department it is a bit slow but as functions as a phone go, Omnia outweight iPhone almost in all aspect. Working on Windows Mobile platform, it means you can download a lot a fully functional application free of charge and sync it with your phone. Not to mention all the great apps the came bundle together with the phone. Something you can't really do with you iPhone (unless of course you jailbreak it).

iPhone being Apple product as ussual has it limitation, you can't use the USB cable to download other that sync with iTtune, as an ereader, I find it a bit difficult to download my ebook without having wireless connection at home (it's not difficult...it's impossible). Something that is not an issue with Omnia.

Omnia comes with 5 megapixel camera complete with flash and another camera at the front (fantastic for 3G conferencing) while iPhone 3G comes with only a 2 megapixel phone at the back, so no, you can't have a Skype conference although you install Skype on your phone (you only can talk on the phone for free if you have Wi-Fi of course, pretty much the same as your iPod touch).

Video playback on iPhone is again limited to only certain format while Omnia video playback was built to play quite a number of video formats. Not to mention a video recorder and editing apps. Omnia battery us use changable while iPhone need the bit Apple store to do that, and since Malaysia only have Apple retailer instead...the problem just escalate.

All in all, Omnia was designed to be a lot of things unfortunately to road to get there is a bit rough. It's like saying you can find Utopia at the end of Africa. If only they can make the touch function more sensitive, this will be a great phone. There is no point having all this great application but trying to use it give you headache.

As for Apple iPhone...it's a fun phone to have with a wireless network and computer, your iPhone can be a great item and with the new software update coming this June hopefully it can be a much better phone. (They upgraded the SMS system on the new software...looks very promising)

Read here for a technical review of Apple iPhone vs Samsung Omnia.

I'm still a bit confused about Nokia, for a mobile phone company, they started with such a great leap, unfortunately they seems to drop the ball somewhere along the way....

As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.- Franz Lebowitz