Samsung Omnia 7

Editor's Review of the Omnia 7

To a large extent, all Windows Phone handsets are going to be pretty similar, due to Microsoft's high-end requirements. However, despite not always having the most impressive features, the Samsung Omnia 7 manages to stand out from the crowd with its gorgeous display.

Design & Build

We weren't so keen on the plastic finish of Samsung's Galaxy Tab, and now we're not too partial on the metal clad exterior of the Omnia 7. Although it might seem like there's no pleasing us, there's no doubting that the metal-clad handset has a premium feel and sits wonderfully in your hand. However, it's dull grey finish doesn't suit the rest of the handset, which eludes a high-end feel.

It may not be as big as the cinematic display of the HTC HD7, but the 4 inch Super AMOLED display on the Omnia 7 is simply amazing. Not only is it so bright and clear it makes your eyeballs want to implode, it completely blows all competion out of the water with its super quick reactions and amazing visuals.

With a 4 inch display, there's no covering up the fact that the Omnia 7 is a large handset. However, with measurements of 112.4 x 64.2 x 10.9mm, it still fits comfortably in your pocket, although we doubt it'll stay in there long!

OS & Interface

With its dazzling display Windows Phone 7 looks better on this handset than any other device released so far. However, when it comes to its operation, the Omnia 7 provides you with exactly what you would expect from a WP7 smartphone.

The interface is dominated with Microsoft's Live Tile interface, whos cartoon like transactions and automatic updates will keep you playing on the handset all day long. Samsung provide their own Live Tile called 'Daily Briefing', which provides you with quick and easy access to the latest news headlines, the weather and stocks.

We're not sure if it's quicker on the capacitive touchscreen of the Omnia 7, but when zooming around the WP7 interface there is no lag, and applications run quickly and smoothly. This may also be helped by the handset's 1GHz Snapdragon processor, as we struggled to keep up with the phone!

Windows Phone 7 also equips you with Microsoft Office, live Facebook streaming and Xbox Live Gaming, which really is as amazing as it sounds.

Multimedia & Storage

We thought Samsung may try and impress with a whopping camera, but we were a bit disappointed to be provided with a 5 megapixel camera with a single LED flash. We shouldn't have been, as the snapper still manages to create some pretty impressive shots, even when in low light settings. The HD video recorder is good too - and produces footage of a similar quality to the iPhone 4.

Of course, you're provided with a built in media player than supports most file formats. We were even impressed to discover than the in-the-box headphones are pretty impressive, which is a rarity.

Here's where it all goes wrong. The Samsung Omnia 7 comes with 8GB of memory onboard, yet there is no microSD slot for expansion. Although it's probably plenty of storage for most people, we'd struggle to squeeze all of our music onto a device packing less than 16GB of memory.

Everything Else

The Omnia 7 comes with an Internet Explorer web browser, which copes well with the handsets super fast internet speeds. It copes well with multitouch too, and zooming around the page is quick and easy. With support for auto-rotate and multi-tab browsing we really shouldn't complain, but we would have loved to have seen copy and paste onboard from launch.

Conclusion

As you can probably tell, we loved the Samsung Omnia 7. It may not have the most high-spec camera or the largest screen, but the quality of its Super AMOLED display makes everything that little bit more enjoyable.