Ladies and Gentlemen I give you
the Samsung Omnia
no really...take it

The Samsung i900 is a phone billed to rival the iphone. Samsung, in their infinite wisdom have decided to give the i900 a pretentious name. It is as a result of this decision that the Omnia was chucked up onto the market, like the meal you ate before you got horribly drunk and ended up leaning up against the nearest McDonalds trying not to hit your shoes. As a result this review is aimed to be a totally fare and balanced account of the arse crack of phone kind.

So...let us first deal with the basics. Why is it called the Omnia? What does Omnia mean? Well... Omnia are a self-described "neoceltic paganfolk" band based in The Netherlands and Belgium and whose members are Irish, Dutch, English and Belgian. I have to believe that Samsung have named the phone after them, since the word has no other meaning. You will read in other reviews that it is Greek for everything. That is utter bullshit. For a start, the prefix 'Omni' is of Latin origin, not Greek. And you can't just add an 'a' to the end and say it means the same as the prefix. It doesn't work like that you knob jockeys. Assuming that they have in fact not named the phone after a band, and have tried to give their phone an all encompassing name meaning everything, that would imply that they are trying to give the impression that this piece of shit is the God of phones. If this was their aim, then they've certainly managed it. Below is a list of how this phone is like God:

1. Both full of false promises
2. Both take money from the gullible
3. Neither do what people say they do
4. Both sound better than they are
5. Both have an equally unreadable manual
6. The infrastructure built around both do an awesome job of masking the shit inside

In fact the only real difference between them is that God is fictional, and the Omnia should be. Lets move on to what this thing can and more importantly can't do.

How It Looks

The phone looks amazing. A bad word cannot be said for the way it looks. Measuring 12.5 x 112 x 56.9mm it is perfectly sized to be held comfortably, and fit in your pocket. Its like Gary Glitter, with its Glam Rock fancy exterior, while all the time hiding the paedophile inside ready to rape your kids.

Phone Calls

Quite a key feature of a mobile phone to my mind is the ability to make and receive phone calls. To their credit Samsung have at least managed to make it do this. Don't fear though, yet another fuck up is just around the corner. You see, the wizened powers that be at Samsung have decided to take it upon themselves to save you from that most dangerous of foes that at any minute threatens to attack.

That's right...the volume of your ringtone. For some unfathomable reason, if you set your ringtone to the loudest setting, rather than just being that volume, it instead starts off quieter for a few seconds and then starts playing how you want it to. Apart from being really annoying, this is totally impractical. Imagine if you will, that you are in quite a loud setting. Lets say for the sake of argument you are at a swingers club, and everyone is orgasming all over the place, and generally being loud. Your phone starts to ring, but due to all the orgasms, you don't here it until it starts to ring properly, at which point you have to find your trousers, orientate them toward the right pocket and then find your phone. At which point you are about to press answer when your fucking voicemail kicks in. Then you have to ring them back ALL BECAUSE OF THE RINGTONE BEING CONSIDERATE. Its like it doesn't really want to interrupt. THAT'S WHAT A PHONE DOES YOU SHIT LICKERS!

The Phone Book

The phone book is described by a lot of reviews as being finger friendly. I can only assume that this means it doesn't rip them off and shove them up your own arse, because its an absolute shit to use. Attempting to scroll through your contacts 9/10 results in which ever contact your finger first comes in contact with opening instead. After a few hours of messing around reading the instructions and refining your technique you will eventually stop blaming yourself and come to realise that your phone is a big streaming torrent of shit.

Texting

Another key aspect of a mobile phone is the ability to send and receive texts. Needless to say they've fucked this up too. Since they've gone with the Windows Mobile interface, rather than creating an inbox and texting feature better suited for a phone, they've just opted for the standard windows mobile inbox. Unless you have freaky needle fingers, you aren't going to be able to use this with any sort of competence. Literally everything about this is truly awful with the menu systems being way to small for finger use. Imagine trying to manipulate the standard windows scroll bar with your finger, with it scaled down to fit on a 3.2" screen. Its impossible. Callista Flockheart (who is the skinniest person I know of) wouldn't be able to do it so what chance has a fat git like you got chunky chops.

Omnia fan boys will now be saying "MMNNNGGGHHH You can use SthilverInbox, thatsth made to be finger friendly MMNNGHHH" Yes you can do that, and yes you can change SilverInbox to be your default inbox in your registry, but why should I. For a start this suffers from exactly the same problems as the phonebook does. And furthermore, if you store your contacts on your phone memory rather than your sim card, the names of your contacts won't be displayed.

The keypad doesn't fare much better either. While being quite responsive, it doesn't really let you know when you've pressed a key. I can hear the Omnia fanboys again saying "MMMNNNGGHH the key changes colour MMMNNGH MMNNGGHH". Yes it does, but my fingers on that key isn't it prick face. It doesn't make a noise does it. It just expects you to be able to some how fit your finger on a key, and be able to see what's underneath it at the same time. Now fuck off. The keypad comes with seven different options, but of those only two are really any use what so ever, and I'm being very kind in that assessment.

The question really comes down to how you text. If you're like me, you like the hold the phone in your hand, and text with your thumb. That is impossible to do with this phone. You can barely achieve spelling a word holding the phone in one hand, and pointing with the index finger of your other. In short, texting with this wank stain is complex and really fucking aggravating. And again I here the fan boys "MMMMNNNGGGHHH Why don't you use the stylus MMNNGHGHH MNNGGHHH?" Because I'm not a prick thats why.

The Stylus (or how to look like a bell-end)

This phone comes with a stylus. That really says it all. Its not an optional extra either as you really do need it. That naturally makes you look like a prick. At some point samsung forgot they were making a phone, and started to think of this as a palm top pc. That is the only explanation for how ludicrously stupid you look using a stylus to ring somebody. In short, using a stylus with a phone is as out of place as Carol Thatcher's sense of humour in decent society. If you are the sort of person who is willing to walk around using a stylus in public, then you are also the sort of person who has nobody to ring.

Internet Connection

We will now move onto the first strictly speaking none related phone application. As you will become accustomed with this phone, there are two options when wishing to browse the internet. You can either use Internet Explorer or opt for Opera mobile. It really doesn't make that much difference. Neither are particularly finger friendly, and you again will have to use the stylus to get anything from them. The real defining feature of this phone however comes when you close the program. Although you've closed the browser of your choice, your internet connection will still remain active. To close this you will instead have to attempt to prod at the correct button on the top start bar, like a monkey poking at poo, and close it manually. In addition, there is nothing to really tell you about this apart from that one button that constitutes no more than a few pixels worth of screen space. Your problems don't stop there though. That would be way too simple. Although you've now closed the browser, and cancelled your connection, the phone will now reconnect to the internet. This is because although you have closed the browser, it remains active in the Task Manager. As a result you will then have to open the Task Manager and end the browser task, while at the same time notice and close all the other applications that have remained open that you haven't used since you got the fucking thing, and then shut your internet connection down again. Needless to say this gets really ANNOYING!

Camera

When it works the camera is actually pretty good. The buttons are big enough to be easily manipulated, and the picture quality is good. In addition, the phones been designed with the camera in mind, so you can take a picture using a side button, like you would any other camera. It doesn't always work though. If your phones been on for any more than a week, attempting to open the camera application will result in an error saying "Not enough internal memory" to appear. The only way to fix this problem is by restarting your phone, which takes a mini ice-age.

The Clock

NEVER RELY ON THE CLOCK. I made the mistake when first getting this phone to set up the alarm to wake me up for work. This worked fine for the first dew days but then it inexplicably lost about half an hour. This of course made me late for work and my excuse of "it was my phones fault" was met with an oral kick in the bollocks. Its happened on more than one occasion too. I have yet to discover why this happens, but I can't help but put the blame at the door of Microsoft. You really could make a better guess at the right time by staring directly at the sun and timing how long it takes you to go blind. Again, there are two different applications for setting an alarm, and making sure you've got the finger friendly version will save you a lot of hassle.

GPS

I can only assume that since the software shown on other review sites is entirely absent on my phone, that in the UK GPS means making do with google maps. This would be fine were it not for the fact that asking it to show your current location can result in it showing somewhere 15 miles away. If I'm lost I want it to show where I am, not where I might be in 10 minutes.

Conclusions

Since the Omnia has by many been regarded as the iphone killer, I will follow suit and compare them. On paper, this phone is undeniably the better phone. It has the bigger screen, more battery life, video calls, better camera etc. Despite all of this however, the iphone wins out. Its less glitchy, its software is bespoke and runs better. Its smoother, its easier to use, its more responsive. The question you've got to ask is "Whats the most important thing a phone should be?", to which for me the answer has to be "It has to be easy and simple to use and you should be able to text with one hand using your fucking thumb". The Samsung Omnia is a pile of shit, and anyone who says different is either lying or mentally ill. I am not exaggerating when I say I would rather have my old Nokia 3110 back, than this devils cock of a phone.

RATING: 1/10