Samsung i900 Omnia Candy Bar Touchscreen 3G mobile phone handset reviews and tariffs

+ It can do alot of different things and looks good

- It took me a long time to work out how to use the phone and i can still not use some of the functions, the phone answers itself so i don't know people are calling and i can't find the function to turn it off, the phone is over complicated and has too many options that it takes a long time to find so everything take ages to do.

+ Great phone with excellent features. This phone is great for watching movies on the go or listening to your favourite MP3's, GPS built in - get yourself satnav software and this is a great feature on a phone, plus it works a treat. Touch screen is responsive. To new users - the operating system may take a little getting used to, but you soon will be navigating the menus with ease. Call quality is good, lots of windows mobile shareware/freeware available for this phone, c/w 8gb of memory with the added benefit of a micro SD slot available for upto an extra 16gb of storage (24gb). I personally think this is a great phone and I'm still exploring it.

- People complain about the battery life, and yes this could be better. But when you consider this phone comes with such a large screen and the backlights then I can live with charging it daily as I would expect a screen of this size to use more juice than my small screened SE W810i. Though this does depend on your usage, do invest in a car charger and a case. Do close applications that you have finished using and your phone will still run fast and be responsive.

+ Having not used a Window Mobile Based platform before and reading other reviews I was a little concerned about obtaining the Samsung Omnia, however I took the plunge and am glad i did. The phone is made of good quality materials and looks stunning, it is a bit on the large size but this is ideal for us fellas with stubby fingers especially as this is a touch phone. The navigation of the phone is a little complicated, unless you are a hardcore windows mobile user, but it does get easier the more times you fiddle with it. I has some cool functions and the web browsing is impressively quick and although most reviews complain about the lack of screen resolution, the videos and pics are very clear. I'm no pro and I managed to set up a proxy for my e-mail account, but this is probably because when you activate the phone it walks you through the set up :o). I have struggled a little with finding various settings and the likes, but I have found some other useful things along the way, that i probably wouldn't have found, so some pros there with navigation. The touch screen is very responsive and the transcriber is a brilliant feature if you spend a bit of time with it and this is now my preferred choice for texting and scribbling notes. There is tons of stuff i still haven't done with the phone and probably wont. All i can say is if you like gadgets then the Samsung Omnia is a must. If you are the occasional mobile user, although this may look cool... it would not be for you.

- Couple of bad points to note, if you use Windows Vista, there are a couple of software probless with the ActiveSync when using the USB cable (it may not be called active sync, sorry not using vista pc at the mo) it seems to find the phone and then drop it, so you can't transfer files or sync with your outlook. They have updated the software on microsoft, but it still isn't clever and it still drops off. I have resorted to buying a bluetooth dongle to see if it will synch this way instead (sorry won't know what the outcome is till i give this a go) With the exception of this, there is little to moan about in terms of bad points. The battery life isn't fantastic, but you can alter various default settings that will reduce the amount of power the phone uses. The last little gripe, is the stylus, it's nice to have the option of a stylus, but it would have been nicer if it could have been tucked away somewhere on the phone as opposed to attaching what looks like a bottle of mascarra, so i'm told to the loop. I've now removed this to save face and just use a pencil or dead pen when needed.

+ have had the handset for three weeks now and so far so good! i actually prefer the handset to the iphone. the camera is great, good storage capacity, the opera browser makes going on the web easy. the phone runs on windows mobile which means it is packed with great features. takes a while to get used to the touch screen if you havent used one before but compared to other smart phones i found this really easy to use. the widgets on the side of the today screen are easy and fun to use

- if you are more interested in the music side of things iwould go for the iphone. dotn get me wrong you can store loads on the omnia and it has various pieces of software to listen to the music for example windows media player and touch player but the iphone is purpose built for music. the battery life isnt great, needs charging almost every day but most touch screen phones do.

+ Lots of top end features, more features than the iphone

- Difficult to use! Had it 3 days and had to take it back...texting/writing emails was a nightmare on the tiny touchscreen keyboard which you can't enlarge. Navigation using Windows Mobile is only possible if you have tiny fingers or will always use the stylus. It's a shame because it's a lovely phone, just too difficult to use it! In the end I changed to the iphone, so much easier to use as a touch screen. Won't be long before the iphone have some more serious rivals but the others have to get away from Windows Mobile it's just not practical.

+ Its great, very much like having a personal PC you can carry 24-7. Internet browsing and Email is easy to use and very fast. All the features and gadgets are certainly something to impress friends with and it never gets boring.

- Ease of access around the phone files, it can be very easy to lose files in the vast space contained in the phone could be more organised and layed out better. I found the internet settings very tempermental, i made a mistake and i think ive got to reset the phone to try and get the facotry settings.

+ stylish.. lots of features... wm6 software can be easily added... good camera and media player when configured..
web browsing like using pc... sat nav feature is great... also a good feature is that you can use it as a usb data modem if your broadband goes down... also wifi is a good feature... divx playback is great...
but the headphone sound needs to be configured too improve sound...
my wife hates it.. says it too my like a pc.. not recommended for the novice... I love this phone once I set it up to work with all the features... one thing I would recommend is gpsgate for using third party sat nav,,,
the device as a mobile phone is excellent with back ground noise.. the phone almost eliminates external noise.
if you like computers and like tweaking with software to make things better than the manufacturer intended then this phone is brilliant...

- poor battery life... messaging is in thread mode and takes a bit getting use to,, not easy to forward calls to mutliple recipients without going through a whole lot of steps/menu options... headphone sound poor...
poor indoor camera.. bad recording sound when videoing... also locks up like a pc when multi tasking.....
however all the above points can be rectified doing a google search and installing various software, except for the battery life. contacts list could do with being bigger so you can use your finger instead of stylus... no good if you have thick fingers and thumbs... overall if the phone was setup / configured by samsung as other people have discovered to overcome the above problems and the battery was better the phone would be great...

+ The touch screen is excellent and not over sensitive - is great to txt with!!!

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+ Overall it is a superb phone,brilliant e mail and web browsing at top speed.Aswell as having windows live messanger.Getting use to texting is difficult at first.Once mastered it is ok.

- Battery life isn't very good,or at least it has been for me,but this is the only problem i would say the phone has.

+ Features, Camera, Touch Screen, Memory, Looks, GPS, Wifi, 3G

- Navigation - needs joystick or similar, Speed - loading programs etc, User Interface/Scrolling, Complicated to use, Music player need improving.

+ Nice looking phone and easy to use.

- First phone - the phone did not lock so had to be returned and this took 3 weeks to complete.

+ Easy to use, Web browsing, everything you need, memory capabilities.

- Bluetooth sometimes does not connect to other phones.

+ Really nice phone with all the features I wanted. Very easy to set up the Outlook email with our company Exchange server. I use the GPS with ordinance survey mapping for country walks, which is great. I discarded the stylus and use a finger to navigate the menus and it works fine. I especially enjoyed comparing to friends iPhones and beating all the features they had.

- Battery life could be better, but I do keep playing with it all the time, which probably doesn't help. Controlling the balance between alert sounds (which I want low) and ringtone volume (which I want loud) could be better too.

+ Slick, neat and well designed. Compact and fully featured. Good I phone alternative

- With the default T mobile firmware, the battery life on my phone was terrible. It wouldn't last a day on standby with no use! Upgrading the firmware to the latest version from Samsung greatly improved it , so it will last nearly two days on standby, which isn't great but is acceptable. It also gets rid of the awful T mobile fanfare at startup!! But upgrading firmware is not everybody's cup of tea... T mobile needs to update its firmware.

+ just design and touch screen

- battery, screen not bright enough, complicated menu, camera