Samsung's Omnia II

Samsung Omnia II was launched in India on 21st October 2009. I was able to take a look at the handset on the same day at a Samsung showroom, owned by a friend of mine. And the very next day, i sold off my old Nokia E71 and got myself a brand new Samsung Omina II. Looks like i bought Nokia E71 back in January’2009….so i guess 10 months was pretty much it.

I really have never bought any Samsung mobile in my life, except for that Reliance powered cute white colored Samsung mobile that came with Reliance CDMA connection. Anyways, i won’t call that buying, as it was the only available set at that time. I always have trusted Nokia above all. And probably have equally used Sony Ericsson as well. But at this moment of time, Nokia is a big failure in Indian markets. No new models, nothing new whatsoever. It’s pretty annoying to see Nokia dying out from market this way. Anyways, why do i care. Samsung is the new king of the cellular phone market with so many exciting new phones, designs, features and pretty good prices. I am fan of good sound in such handsets, beside the other good features. And Samsung’s sound feature of WowHD, simply rocks. It really is outstanding.

Omnia II is not the first touch screen phone i have used. I started off with Sony Ericsson P900 wayback in 2004. After that i have used Nokia 7710 which was kind of brick but still pretty good. Then came the Apple iPhone which is the best touch screen enabled phone i have ever used. Unfortunately i had to replace iPhone just because it couldn’t offer a simple feature called “Quality in sound”. Neither the ring was audible nor any iPod songs or videos. Other than that there were no other flaws in iPhone that i couldn’t have ignored. Anyways, it’s not cool to compare Samsung Omnia II with Apple iPhone. Samsung are way behind from Apple when it comes to user interface, easiness and comfort of use and stuff like that. But Samsung do provide better quality videos and sounds. So i get that even’s it out.

Okay so, i got the Samsung Omnia II phone on 23rd October. Here’s how the box looks like!

Samsung Omnia II

All seals have been broken now. And the phone has been unpacked. It’s a sheer beauty. Bigger, better and brighter than any other phone i have ever used. It’s a Rose Black color handset. But until and unless i am under lot of bright sunshine, i will always see the color as black. As you must have noticed on the box, Samsung Omnia II works on windows mobile operating system. Okay so here is what the package contains:
1. Handset
2. Battery
3. Travel adapter (Charger)
4. CD-ROM
5. Stereo Headset
6. PC Data cable
7. Stylus Pen
8. Leather Case/Cover
9. TV Out Cable
10. User Manual

Samsung Omnia II

Omnia II has a 480X800 resolution and has a 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED touchscreen for Ultra brilliant display. With 5 megapixel camera and such a huge screen, this phone is the show stopper. The AMOLED screen is pretty large and amazing. It produces sharp and vibrant images thus making it all the more good looking. As compared to iPhone that used 16k colors, Omnia II uses 65k colors thus making it lot brighter and clearer and better quality. I was already in love with the phone.

Samsung Omnia II (Unpacked)

The battery is pretty huge. And with such high graphics and so much of exploring all day long, besides the other activities, this phone somehow manages to keep up the battery up for long durations. After the very first charging, i used it for good 60 hours before the next charge. That’s 2 and a half days. It’s pretty pretty good. For the specs, it has a 1500 mAh battery.

The camera is super cool. I haven’t experienced such a camera in any cell phone that i have owned previously. It has 5 megapixel auto focus camera and it has a dual LED flash which is really strong. The best features are the Geo-tagging, face detection, smile detection, image stabilization, super Wide Dynamic Range (WDR), D1(720×480) video recording at 30fps and QVGA @120fps.

Samsung Omnia II

I have three cellular phones after taking out Nokia E71 and replacing it with Samsung Omnia II. Ofcourse, it’s the biggest phone that i own as it is much bigger than iPhone! Here is some comparison pics. The junior on left is Sony Ericsson’s S500i. I just can’t it let it go for some reason and it has been with me for last 3 years or so.

Sony Ericsson S500i & Samsung Omnia II & Apple iPhone

Another look at these cellular handsets from a different angle:

Sony Ericsson S500i & Samsung Omnia II & Apple iPhone

I can really go on and on about the cell phone. I haven’t even described half it’s features yet! I guess right now it would be best to let the small specs do the talking

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100 MHz, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
• Dimensions: 118 x 59.6 x 11.9 mm
• Display: 3.7-inch 64K-color WVGA AMOLED touchscreen, 480 x 800 pixels, Advanced Resistive Touch
• Memory: 8/16GB storage memory, hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
• OS: Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional with custom TouchWiz 2.0 UI with 3D effects
• CPU: 800 MHz
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth with A2DP, standard microUSB port, standard 3.5mm audio jack, GPS receiver with A-GPS
• Accelerometer for screen auto rotate
• DivX/XviD video support
• FM radio with RDS
• DNSe
• Battery: 1500 mAh battery

Some people might face the problem of changing the font size in Samsung Omnia II. The font size in text messaging and related function is very large in size. To shorten the text size in Samsung Omnia II, you will first have to Seetings >> General Settings >>Samsung TouchWiz UI >> Disable Samsung Touchwiz UI. Now come back to main screen. Click on Start…there will be two Settings option. One will be the same one you accessed earlier. The other will be right at the bottom of the menu, just above “Help”. Click the Settings tab. In the bottom of screen you will see three tabs named “Personal, Sytrem and Connections”. Tab the system panel. In there you will see an option for Screen. Click on it and it will show you “Align screen” page. In the bottom there will be another panel called “Text Size”. Now make the size work as per your comfort. After you are done with this, you can enable Samsung TouchWiz again. Font size will not revert to old one.
I just searched for the same problem but couldn’t find any answer. Now that i do have the answer, i thought why not spread the message!!!!
If you have some queries about the phone or it’s features, then do let me know about it. Always here to help you out!

Samsung SyncMaster 226BW

I had been using a Samsung 19 inch LCD display since last year or so. It was pretty good and i really didn’t need a new LCD display anyways. But things turned out in a different way and i had to buy a new monitor. So i went in for a Samsung SyncMaster 226BW. That’s right, it’s a 22inch monitor. And the web looks bigger now

I have trusted Samsung since long and i believe in their display units. I remember my first CRT monitor from BenQ. I bought it for 7000 INR and even though it is 17″ inch flat CRT monitor and in perfect health and shape, the resale value for that monitor is not more than 1000INR. So it’s still sitting tight in my computer peripherals almirah. However as for Samsung, i am really pleased with the picture quality, the technology, the looks of the monitor and of course, the resale value. As on now, i have three monitors, all of Samsung brand. One being 17″ TFT monitor being used by my brother. Other one being 19″ widescreen LCD display, being used by my father. And the third one that i just bought being used by me at the moment. Check out the image i have attached on right. This is what i now have and it looks really good.

Samsung SyncMaster 226BW is a 22inch flat screen computer monitor and has a high resolution of 1680×1050. This model weighs around 10.8lbs. That’s around 4.9kgs. Yes, it’s pretty heavy. But i like this mean machine. It’s got 16:10 aspect ratio which is more favorable when watching movies or any video. It accepts DVI input, so i get a pretty good, in fact better signal clarity. As for the response time, this model has it at 2ms. So this seems to be perfect for my needs, that is movies and high end gaming.

Samsung SyncMaster 226BW is a value for money kinda stuff. The features you get in this monitor are pretty cool for a monitor prices this low. Oh well, i forgot mentioning the price. It’s woth $330. That’s around 16,000 INR. Of course i read all the available reviews on this monitor at all popular sites like Cnet, etc, before buying it. And i was unable to find any Cons for this machine. And now that i have been using it for a week or so, i can’t find any cons either. So it’s really pretty good!

And hey, just one more thing. I also got my computer formatted. And now am running Microsoft Vista on my PC. And yes, it is a legit copy. The experience is wonderful. The clarity and sharpness is superbly amazing. And along Vista providing graphics and all gallery stuff it does, this monitor really makes my experience, a very pleasant one!