Samsung i8910 Omnia HD review: HD Recorder (See all reviews)

Apple might have changed the mobilephones market with its iPhone, but Samsung is getting ready to revolutionize it with its Samsung Omnia HD. Announced in February 2009, during MWC, the Samsung's Omnia HD is the company’s first S60 5th Edition touchscreen smartphone, and, as its name suggests, the first one on the market that supports HD 720p video recording.

Following the huge success of the first Omnia that ran under Windows Mobile 6.1, Samsung took a different approach with Omnia HD, choosing S60 as the UI of choice. What this basically means is that they took the new S60 touch screen UI, found in the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and added the widget-enabled home screen. If we were to have a basic comparison, we’d say the handset is essentially an improved Nokia 5800 phone but built within Samsung’s elegant design, with a bright 3.7 inch display and more powerful hardware.

Main Features:

- Symbian S60 5th edition.
- 3.7-inch 16M color capacitive AMOLED touchscreen.
- ARM Cortex-A8 600MHz processor; Graphics HW Accelerator.
- GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz, UMTS 900/1900/2100MHz, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps.
- 8MP autofocus camera with LED flash, geo-tagging and face detection.
- HD 720p at 24fps, 720x480 at 30fps video recording
- Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS.
- TV out, DivX/XviD support, FM radio with RDS
- Accelerometer, Proximity sensor and Magnetometer for digital compass.

Disadvantages:

- Poor sunlight legibility.
- Quality of sound during talk is below average.
- Fingerprint magnet exterior.
- No predefined e-mail settings for popular providers.
- No HDMI connector to output HD video to a HD TV
- No camera lens protection.

The first thing that will strike you with the Omnia HD is its size, as the phone is by no means a small one. The reason for this is the 3.7-inch AMOLED screen and the HD camera stuck on its back. In terms of build quality everything is well fitted and gives you a feeling of a well made product and quality materials. The mono-block design is also an advantage when it comes to durability as there are no moving parts.

Most of the phone’s front panel is dominated by its main attraction, the 3.7-inch 16M-color OLED touchscreen. It uses the capacitive touchscreen technology, as opposed to the resistive one of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and the lightest finger touch will register your command, no pressure being necessary.

Now, let’s take your eyes off the screen and you’ll notice it is nicely framed by a metallic silver strip. In the top left corner we find the 0.3MP video calling camera, right next to the proximity and light sensors. The proximity sensor is used for locking the display during phone calls to avoid accidental presses.

There are three hardware keys on its front side, the Call/End buttons and another one that activates the main menu. The End key doubles as a power button. They are fairly large and have good travel, so you feel that quite distinctly.

On the left side we find the volume rocker, which is adequately sized and quite easy to work with. Next to it we have the microSD card slot, which is hot-swappable, allowing the handset to support microSD cards of up to 16GB. The 3.5 mm. jack and both stereo speakers can be found on its top and bottom.

The camera key is in the standard place, on the lower half of the left hand side, and has some nice give and solid feel for taking pictures and activating auto-focus. Above this is hold key, used to lock and unlock the touchscreen and the microUSB port. We were pleased to notice that Samsung added microUSB phone charging.

At the back we can see the 8MP camera lens, which sits within a slightly raised boss, and an LED flash/video light. With such video recording capabilities, it's quite understandable why they went for the LED technology instead of xenon.

Fortunately, the battery located under the cover is a 1500 mAh unit. During our test, we had around four hours of constant video playback and about five hours of talk time under the 3G network. On typical use, the phone works three days and while used really extensively should safely last two full days. HD video recording does not seem to affect battery life in a larger degree than VGA recording on other S60 phones, either.

The size and weight of the Samsung OMNIA HD i8910 are balanced pretty well, the phone feels solid in your hand but we have to point out again that a comfortable single-handed operation will be an issue for some users due to the phone’s big size.