Wireless invention
The battery is a 1500mAh job, which is surprisingly squat and Samsung reckons it's good for more than 13 days on standby. It’s a rather less surprising figure given that it's the screen that drains the power. I didn't get to leave it that long, not to mention that Windows Phone 7 gets lonely without a data connection, but I did manage several days use between charges, which is good going for a smartphone these days.
HD video recording, but just a 5Mp stills snapper
Technically the Samsung works well, supporting all the popular GSM frequencies including UMTS at 900MHz, which should become available in the UK over the next year or two. Calls were clear, and signal strength was comparable with other handsets. Wi-Fi, 802.11n is supported, but the Omnia seems very optimistic in reporting signal strength. For a while I thought it had remarkable abilities, but it turns out it was lying and often displays a full-strength Wi-Fi signal when, in fact, there's barely a connection.
Audio playback is surprisingly good, and loud, for a telephone that is: so, still not very good really. Teenagers on trains will no doubt appreciate the volume though. Attached to Bluetooth headphones it performs well, and doesn't seem to suffer from the inability to manage Bluetooth and Wi-Fi at the same time, as besets other Samsung handsets.
Sample Shots
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Sample Video
720p video capture
Click for a full-resolution clip
The camera and flash are the minimum required by Microsoft, so it's 5Mp and an LED torch masquerading as a flash gun. It will shoot video at 720p, but while it might be high definition the quality still leaves a lot to be desired in terms of exposure and autofocus. Also, when shooting in HD, the on-screen viewfinder shows distinct lag, which can be distracting.
Next page: Smart choice
COMMENTS
FYI
For the information of the reviewer, Microsoft DOES allow SD cards and some phones such as the Focus and Dell Venue Pro do indeed have SD card slots supporting up to 32GB, which, combined with the 8GB internal storage, yields a mammoth 40GB in total.
The Omnia 7 does not have an SD card slot, but that was Samsung's decision, not Microsoft's. Please get your facts right. You're the professional, I'm just a punter. If I can get it right, so can you.
@whiteafrican
"And what on earth are you doing on your phone that requires frequent use of copy-and-paste anyway?"
smart phone can do much more than talking to mother on it, you should really try it
seriously ... come on !
Viewing an email, want to take a paragraph to text it to someone
picking up a phone number to paste in a mail or a note
taking a picture to compose a nice little blog entry
picking up a url to add to a twitt message
swapping text in general between several apps
Don't bother using a smart phone if you never needed once to copy and paste.
New test framework?
I could be wrong - it's not unheard of - but I'd say that the Reg's audience is likely to use some of the more powerful aspects of this (or any) smartphone: the email capability, the internet, texts and so on. Rather than having a page of sample photos, could you tell us how useful (or otherwise) it is for more power users; and whether for lighter users it has sufficiently low-brow things like Facebook and Twitter covered well enough? (All IMHO, of course, and reflecting what aspects I'd tend to look for in a smartphone)
standarised
Im confused; with Microsoft imposing a strict feature set on their partners, how any of them are going to differentiate themselves - as effectively they are all now competing for the same niche in the market.
Standard MS business practice
Commoditize the hardware and make your OEMs compete on price. If you have a working monopoly this is great because you can charge what the market will bear for the OS and let your OEMs battle it out to reduce purchase costs to the consumer while all the time you let the unknowing consumer believe that they are getting your overpriced and under performing product for free because they aren't aware of (and are not offered) whatever alternatives that may exist.
This is exactly how the PC industry works today.
It won't work here of course as MS don't have anything *like* a monopoly in the mobile market.
