Samsung Omnia II I8000 Review
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The Samsung Omnia II I8000 sports the same 5MP resolution as the original Omnia, but it now has a dual LED flash and video recording has been vastly improved. It now records at DVD quality (720x480) at 30fps, and can go as high as 120fps at QVGA resolution for slow motion recording.
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Camcorder interface | |||
Samsung Omnia II I800 Sample video at 720x480 pixels resolution
*Note that due to codecs support, you may not be able to play the file.
** Keep in mind that the video file is about 12MB.
There is some noticeable delay in the camera. It takes about 3s to start up, another 3 to snap a picture and then another 4-5 to snap another. These times are acceptable, but not really great. Pictures turned out so-so as well. As the light got worse they got grainier, and even in bright sunlight color saturation was poor. Detail was good though, even blown up we were able to make out individual leaves pretty well.
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Outdoor pictures shot with the Samsung Omnia II I8000 | |||
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Strong light | Medium light | Low light | Darkness |
Indoor samples | |||
There are plenty of options to play with. In camera mode the user can select 5, 3, 2 or 0.3 megapixel resolutions, set the ISO from 50-400 or let the device do it for you, adjust the contrast, saturation and sharpness, choose from four preset or automatic white balance and enable Anti-Shake, WDR and geotagging. There are several different scene modes to produce more realistic images: Portrait, Landscape, Sunset, Dusk & Dawn, Night Shot, Text, Sports, Backlight, Party & Indoors, Beach & Snow, Fall Color, Fireworks and Candle Light. Features we’ve seen from Samsung before, like Smile Detection, are also available. The easy-to-use panoramic mode has gotten even easier, now taking 8 shots with the camera virtually doing all the work for you. All the user has to do is snap the first shot and then slowly pan to the right or left while the camera lines it up and snaps the rest of the shots. Results were good, but the resolution gets significantly lowered to 2912x400
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Panorama made with Samsung Omnia II I8000 |
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Camera interface | |||
Multimedia:
Samsung’s Touch Player handles music and video playback. No surprise here, but it’s very well laid out and has large icons for easy finger use. The layout is pretty straight forward, you can view all tracks or by album or artist, and can create your own playlists. Sound quality with the included headphones was excellent, especially after enabling the WoW HD. Samsung’s DNSe technology is employed for more realistic sound reproduction. Even though the included headphones were very good, since the Samsung Omnia II I8000 has a 3.5mm headset jack you can choose to use whatever headphones you wish.
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The Touch Player of Samsung Omnia II I8000 | |||
The Touch Player is much more polished this time around, with better controls and a more professional look. One cool hidden feature is that when listening to music, if the device is locked you can swipe down from the top to reveal music controls. We do have to mention that it failed to read any ID3 information on 2 of our 6 test albums, which was a disappointment.
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Music playback | ||
Video playback was brilliant. It supports MPEG4, WMV, DivX, XviD, H.263 and H.264 and was able to handle every file type, frame rate and resolution we threw at it. It should be noted that none of our test files have a higher resolution than the Omnia II’s native WVGA. The quality of video was amazing, everything looked fantastic on the wonderful AMOLED screen. There are two preloaded promo videos which really highlight the brilliance of the screen.
There is an FM radio tuner that uses the headphones as an antenna. It works as advertised. The onboard video editor left a bit more to be desired; it was a bit awkward to use, and does not support videos taken at the phone’s highest resolution. In theory you can stitch videos together, add text and/or audio to them or auto clip them based on certain parameters, but we were not impressed.
The same 3D cube interface we first saw on the Jet is available on the Omnia II. It is a watered down multimedia interface, and we’re really not sure what Samsung is trying to do here. In addition to music, videos, games and photos there is a favorite contact side and web bookmark side. Functionality is OK we guess, but it’s a very primitive app that doesn’t fit with the theme of the device and really offers nothing in the way of convenience.
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The 3D cube | |
Software:
The Omnia II is a Windows Mobile 6.1 device which will be upgradable to Windows Mobile 6.5 once it is released. It runs on a lightning-fast 800MHz processor with 256MB of RAM and 512MB ROM. One would think this should be plenty muscle to power the device, but as noted earlier we saw too many beach balls for our liking and there was noticeable lag at times.
Besides all the Samsung software found on the Omnia II there are a few other helpful programs. DNLA’s Connected Home allows the user to access music libraries from remote computers, and Midomi will listen to the song playing and return track information. The Streaming Player is similar to HTC’s Streaming Media player, neither of which are all that practical for playing internet videos. Qik allows you to share live video from your phone with friends and family. There is an RSS reader and Podcast feed reader for keeping up with the latest current events. There is a communities option that lets you link your Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Photobucket, Picasa and Friendster (people still use that?) accounts so you can upload photos or go to the website (where you’ll have to login again,) but that’s the extent of it.
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DNLA’s Connected Home app | Midomi | Communities option |
The Samsung Omnia II I8000 comes with included NAVFone Plus software, but that did not do us any good here in the States. Fortunately any GPS program you can get your hands on will work since it is unlocked, and we had no issues downloading and using Google Maps. Samsung uses their XTRA software to give quicker GPS locks, much like HTC’s QuickGPS program.
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Smart Reader app |
There is a very interesting Smart Reader application which will not only scan business cards, but also documents and will even translate words captured with the camera (in our review unit’s case, from English to French and vice versa.) Last but not least the Office Mobile suite is included as well as Adobe Reader LE for .pdf documents.
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46 Comments
1. rtimi26 posted on 20 Oct 2010, 01:55 0 0
Okay you got certain things down right about the phone being a little laggy, but don't you think its because you had to re-skin windows ontop of windows. I would think that would be enough to slow any phone down, and yet according to all reviews, that I have read it seems to be doing well, so please why the 8 and not 9.5 or at least a 9. Well that's your opinion but all in all great review.
2. filteroff posted on 04 Aug 2009, 10:25 0 0
I wonder if you can disable the UI on this phone and use something like SPB Mobile Shell... SPB might just do the trick
4. hunter posted on 04 Aug 2009, 11:04 0 0
Just got mine for a week, don't like the touchwiz. I disabled it and replace its with spbshell 3... And its perfect, no lag. Anyone knows how to get mapking working on this set?
5. tshow84 posted on 04 Aug 2009, 11:04 0 0
where did they get 8 from? even if they're not basing it on the average (9.375)...if the everything else is so awesome, why not give it a 9.5, taking off .5 for one small flaw that im sure will be remedied in a future software release...or can they really not rate it higher than the iphone (the original iphone averaged rating: 3G: 8.5625, 3G s : 8.05625 - phonearena rating: 3G : 8.5, 3G s : 8.8)
8. drewsky posted on 04 Aug 2009, 15:00 0 0
You got it they can't rate it better than the Iphone.
10. tedkord posted on 04 Aug 2009, 22:04 0 0
That's how my old employer used to do our annual employee ratings - you'd get above average or excellent on each individual section, then get average as your overall grade. When I asked about that, I was told it was because everyone is expected to excel, so excellence is average. Or, it's my job to do more than my job. I no longer work there, and they got NO notice when I quit.
36. Schmao posted on 15 Nov 2009, 13:38 0 0
Saying they couldn't rate it better than the iphone, makes no sense whatsoever. Obviously you are lost. Go read up on your details before making a stupid comment. Look at all the phones that have higher rating than the iphone.
3. Pure Gold posted on 04 Aug 2009, 11:01 0 0
Can someone help me out with PA ratings? I don't get them. The Omnia II gets great individual scores, but gets an 8 overall compared to say the Samsung Jet which gets pretty good individual scores but a 9 overall. What am I missing? Does the overall rating depend on something different?
37. Schmao posted on 15 Nov 2009, 13:39 0 0
Go to the "HOW WE RATE" link and all your questions will be answered
6. Andrewtst posted on 04 Aug 2009, 12:38 0 0
Phone arena always have overall rating issue. I have this phone, it is smooth, the only place need to tune is during new sms, landscape mode of touch player and photo browser. Beside this, it is cool. I also install SPB mobile shell, as it made the phone more coolest. ;-)
7. rtimi26 posted on 04 Aug 2009, 13:16 0 0
well people you are right that is a little confusing when the jet got a 9 and O2 got an 8, lets just hope all read the full review. Like i said to a friend iphone should be a feature phone and not a smartphone while if you want full featured phone, lets see what 6.5 and 7 would look like.
9. tedkord posted on 04 Aug 2009, 21:54 0 0
Technically, resolution is quadrupled, not doubled. 384,000 pixels vs. 96,000. Or, of you're looking at ppi, it's about 252ppi vs. 146ppi., or about 1.73X more pixels per inch. I think the iPhone is something like 165 ppi, so this display should look NICE! But, I've been reading that the daylight visibility is poor. That's my number one complaint about my Omnia. It's a great phone which is virtually unuseable outdoors in daylight.
11. PhoneArena Team posted on 05 Aug 2009, 01:42 0 0
Thanks for the note! We had it fixed immediately.
12. behold--me posted on 05 Aug 2009, 15:43 0 0
like the jet better.....smaller and DOESNT have that p.o.s. winmo ui
13. mr. anderson posted on 06 Aug 2009, 00:05 0 0
do you people not actually read the reviews? everyone always gets so caught up in the numbers, averaging this and that. first off, read their link right under the ratings. secondly, if you actually read the review (or hell, even the conclusion...hell, even the cons) you'd see that the lag killed the phone, and then youd understand why it only got an 8.
14. Andrewtst posted on 06 Aug 2009, 00:43 0 0
It is not ready lag, I not sure why they mention cons as lag, lag, lag. I am using it now and I am happy with it.
15. rtimi26 posted on 06 Aug 2009, 10:00 0 0
speak about lag, just for you to know, what multi-tasking phone today doesn't have lag. Any phone that has to keep the memory used due to runing apps will eventually lag. According to pocketnow.com you can increase cpu performance and not affect battery, which means to me that it can get faster. Maybe when 6.5 comes out it would be less laggy. I am currently runing cooked rom on the original omnia and doesn't seem to be as laggy as the 6.1. Lets I remind you again that ontop of the wm applications already installed, there is also samsungs applications running. Keep that in mind folks. Just wait for a featured phone from samsung like the jet with multitasking which doesn't slow down like windows. Its all about windows, which has been clarified that wm7 won't have this problem. Windows mobile 7 is said to have certain hardware requirements which manufacturers have to stick to so therre won't be many variations of it and therefore would be easy to make things uniform and fast.
38. destardi posted on 02 Dec 2009, 08:45 0 0
My Droid is 5 weeks old..and doesn't lag between any screens at all.
16. ruggedruffian posted on 07 Aug 2009, 14:49 0 0
Honestly Phone Arena, please be more detailed about your reviews. You spend half your conclusion complaining about the lag, but the lag is mentioned in at most 1 line during your whole review. Why don't you go more into detail. The cube is choppy, the email takes 5 seconds to pop up, etc etc. You use a lot of slick salesman talk grazing over a lot of features, but please go into more detail and give us a better idea of the UI.
17. aulton85 posted on 11 Aug 2009, 09:04 0 0
I agree with most on this review. Its solid, to the point and shows all the greats about this new phone and the major fault it has that can be fixed with a firmware update or mobile shell. But the problem comes in the average score. Both the Hero and Iphone 3Gs received their average score. Well the Hero got rounded up, but the point is the average for the samsung, when all is added together and divided is a 9 at least. Why the 8 if you base your overall rating on average. Clarify your rating scheme please because you follow average for other devices EXCEPT this one.
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