My favourite phone so far (Samsung GT i8910 Omnia HD)

Member Name: JackED42

Product:	Samsung GT i8910 Omnia HD
Date:	31/08/09 (204 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: HD recording, AMOLED screen, lots of features.. see the review!

Disadvantages: Slow with orange firmware, apparently some people have issues with battery depletion

The Samsung i8910i or Omnia HD is one of the newest phone models by Samsung and the first ever phone to have HD video recording.

The features of this phone are an 8 Megapixel camera with 4x Digital Zoom, a HD camcorder, a 3.7in AMOLED full touch screen with a resolution of 364 x 640, a 3.5mm headphone jack, FM radio, stereo speakers an accelerometer, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi a MicroSD slot that supports up to 32gb memory sticks and 8gb/16gb built in memory.

This phone runs the Symbian S60 v5 operating system. The phone is nearly completely controlled by touch, i.e. no physical pull out number, letter and navigation keys. Some people do not like having to use touch most of the time to navigate a phone, and if that is the case, this phone isn't for you. The phone is very easy to navigate with easily labelled buttons and a well laid out menu. All of the programs and folders in the menu can be ordered how you want and can be shown in a grid or in a list. The only issue I have with navigation is that there is an inconsistency with single and double tapping to access different parts of the phone. The phone has a few buttons; Answer Call, Hang Up, Volume Control, a button to access the main menu, a Hold Button, and a Camera button. The AMOLED screen is amazing, and is extremely clear for watching videos and viewing pictures.

The phone has three different home screens that can be used; Finger Use, Samsung Widget, and Basic. All of the themes show the signal strength, battery power, the time, date, at the top of the screen and shortcuts to the "phone" (numbers for dialling), contacts, messaging and main menu at the bottom. The finger use theme just makes the home screen have four shortcuts to programs of your choice. The widget theme (shown in the picture), allows you to have different widgets on the home screen. These widgets are in a sidebar, and can be dragged to anywhere on the screen. The widgets include quick links to websites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and helpful tools. The basic theme has no shortcuts and just shows the wallpaper. I use finger use as it is not as cluttered as the widget theme, and also makes the phone faster.

The music player is very easy to use. It will scan your phone for any music files that are on it. You can find tracks by searching through Artists, Albums, Playlists, All Tracks, Genres and also by Album Art. To search through your albums by their covers, all you have to do is turn the phone horizontally. The only issue with the music player is that it does not remember the position of the last track played in it.

The phone has galleries for Images & Videos, sound clips, songs and other media. There is also a media browser that shows all photos and videos on the phone. The media browser can be controlled by swiping your finger across the screen or by tilting the phone.

The phone has a built in video player that supports MPEG-4, WMV, H.263, H.264, DivX, and Xvid, including HD content. Real player is also installed on the phone. I don't really use it, but it does allow you to stream from your computer.

The camera on this phone is good. The camera has many modes; it has a macro mode, which can take amazing close up photos. It has face/blink detection, which helps focus faces in the photo and blink detection warns you when someone has blinked. There are pre-set configurations on the camera which are specific to different scenes, i.e. sport, text, night shots etc. The only "problem" with the camera is that it has a LED flash and not a XENON flash. However, this is acceptable because the LED flash is also used on the camcorder. The camera is perfectly acceptable for taking the odd photos and is good enough for what I need.

Now to the main feature of this phone, the camcorder. As mentioned above the camcorder is HD, and it records at 720p! As you would expect, the quality is amazing in HD and plays well on the phone or on a HD screen. It is also possible to record slow motion and fast motion videos. The amount of fun you can have with a slow motion camera is endless, and the most mundane things look brilliant. The LED flash can be used as a light to take videos in dark areas. There is an issue with sound quality, but this can be fixed with a firmware update, which makes it acceptable. I could not ask for a better camcorder and is perfect for recording skating videos.

The phone has a built in GPS. There are various different pieces of GPS software available to use with this phone, the only two I have tried is Garmin Mobile XT and Sygic Mobile. They both have their advantages but I have stuck to Garmin Mobile XT. There is also one created by Samsung, but you have to pay a yearly fee. Once a week you can also download the satellite positions which makes the phone pick up the GPS signal very quickly.

The phone does have some issues: -

One problem with the phone is the browser is quite unresponsive and will crash randomly quite often. This is apparently being fixed in a firmware update soon.

I have found the battery life to be really good on this phone, but I have read that some people have had issues with theirs. The battery life depletes faster when using the camera, and GPS, but not ridiculously so.

The built in speaker quality is not amazing, but is better than some. I do like it though because they are stereo speakers.

The Symbian S60 v5 is becoming obsolete, so if the amount of applications and games being released for it is a lot less than say, the iPhone. However, if you look for long enough, you will find the odd useful app or fun game.


This phone seems to be priced between about 400-500 pounds. I think this is a completely acceptable price for what the phone does. The phone is also available on contract through orange. However, if you get the phone on contract with Orange, I would highly recommend you debrand the phone as it is just bloated with random things that slow the phone down immensely.

I cannot recommend this phone enough; it is the favourite phone that I have ever owned.

Summary: I love this phone, check it out. Recommended!