Gather 'round ye gadget lovers, for the tale of Samsung I8000 Omnia II. It's a tale of PocketPC wisdom and touch wizardry, of big screen and pixel aplenty, of ancestry and identity. Lend an ear to this preview as we try to figure out where this creature came from and where it's heading.
Samsung announced the Omnia HD a few months ago and despite sharing a name with the i900 Omnia, it was more a descendant of the Samsung i8510 INNOV8 with its Symbian OS and strong emphasis on imaging.
Coming a year later, the Samsung I8000 Omnia II is the real proper sequel instead.
Samsung I8000 Omnia II official photo
The number of high-end, touchscreen PocketPC bars is getting ever greater. Off the top of our heads, we could name at least five with WVGA screens over 3 inches and a camera of 3.15 MP or higher. If you include phones with a slide-out QWERTY then the market gets even more crowded. All of these have HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, and sleek UI plug-ins, so this isn't a differentiating factor.
The Samsung I8000 Omnia II roars into action with a 5 megapixel camera, 800 MHz CPU, and a huge 3.7 AMOLED screen and 8/16 gigabytes of internal storage. Here's a quick summary of the main I8000 Omnia II specs.
Samsung I8000 Omnia II at a glance:
- General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100 MHz, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
- Form factor: Touchscreen bar
- Dimensions: 107 x 59 x 12.9 mm
- Display: 3.7-inch 64K-color WVGA AMOLED touchscreen, 480 x 800 pixels, Advanced R touch (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
- Camera: 5 megapixel auto focus camera with dual LED flash, geo-tagging, face and smile detection, image stabilization, Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) and D1 video recording at 15 fps
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth with A2DP, standard microUSB port, standard 3.5mm audio jack, GPS receiver with A-GPS
- Misc: Accelerometer for screen auto rotate, DivX/XviD video support, FM radio with RDS, DNSe
- Battery: 1500 mAh battery
The thumbable cube launcher engaged on the wide screen
Bear in mind that the device we're using for this preview is in the early stages of development so the software will go even further changes before mass production. That said, let's not waste any more time and check out the contender in the Samsung corner - the I8000 Omnia II.
Let us get one thing out of the way first - yes, the design of the phone is hardly revolutionary but when the front is all screen, there's very little room for variation. Okay, now that we've dealt with the "hey, it's a (insert favorite touchscreen phone) clone!" crowd lets have a closer look, because when things are almost the same, the devil's in the details. The Samsung I8000 Omnia II front is quite sleek with black glass framing the display, while the surface around the buttons is made of a matte material that helps keep away fingerprints. The edge is encircled with a strip of glossy gray plastic, which is quite nice - it looks elegant and subtly emphasizes the display. The front, much like the front of a TV set is dominated by the display. It's an AMOLED unit, 3.7 inches in size and pushes the limits of one hand usability. With a WVGA resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, it's among the highest resolution examples on the market. The only things that stop it from being perfect are the limited number of colors - 64K - and the resistive display, both restrictions of the underlying Windows Mobile OS. That and the disappointing sunlight legibility. Samsung are touting their I8000 Omnia II as having an Advanced R touch (Resistive Touch) display, which should give it a better response, however it seems that our unit is too early a prototype to pass judgments. We are yet to learn more about the technology and its application. There's also no slot for a stylus. So, in the original Omnia tradition the I8000 Omnia II users will have to do with a dongle if they insist on having one along. There are three hardware buttons on the front - call and end keys obviously and the center button. Now, the center button deserves some attention. If you take a close look at it, it is in fact a 3D cube and its backlight pulses pleasingly when active. The cube is a button that activates the Cube launcher , which is part of the new UI. When the Cube launcher is opened, the button's backlighting is blue, but that changes to red when the battery is critically low. The video call camera and an ambient light sensor are above the display. On the left you get the volume rocker and on the right are the hardware Back key and the task switcher / shutter key combo. The latter is not a single button as we've seen in a number of recent Samsung handsets but a rocker-styled control where the shutter key is tangibly raised. It can be half-pressed too to handle auto-focus. All controls are easy to use in both single and two-handed use scenarios. The top houses the power button, 3.5 mm audio jack and a microUSB port that is protected by a cover. The phone charges via the microUSB port which is quite useful as you can skip the charger when traveling if you have a computer with you. The bottom is not very interesting - only the microphone pinhole is there. The 3.5mm audio jack is definitely a nice feature even despite the fact that there is no protective cap to hide it from dirt and grime when it's not used. The 5 megapixel camera lens is on the back of the device along with the dual LED flash. It is not protected by a lens cover but there is a slightly raised edge surrounding it. The LED flash can also be used as a flashlight. Both the camera and the nub are on one side making the device rock back and forth when laid on a flat surface. The lack of stereo speakers is a shame, especially given that otherwise the device is a very capable portable media player. Under the back cover, you'll find a 1440 mAh battery like the one in the original Samsung Omnia and the SIM and microSD card slots. It seems that in the final unit showcased at the launching event today, Samsung have opted for a 1500 mAh battery used on Samsung I7500 Galaxy. The memory slot is very near the edge so it shouldn't have been hard to make it accessible without opening the back cover, but still it's not. However, the ample internal storage does go some way to making up for that inconvenience. The build quality is quite solid. The back cover is not held by any complicated release systems but is still quite stable and there are no audible creaks or unusual sounds. The front buttons don't wobble and have very satisfying feedback. The Samsung I8000 weighs in at 117 grams and its rounded edges make it seem thinner than it really is. Overall, the top edges of the display may be a little hard to reach if your fingers are not very long, but the device is still reasonably pocketable and quite alright to handle. The Samsung I8000 Omnia II runs on the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS but normally you wouldn't guess that at first sight. The start menu might give it away but Samsung have done a pretty good job of customizing the rest of the UI. The company's proprietary TouchWiz UI is installed on top of the Microsoft OS and covers it so completely that it's hard to come across those boring native menus. The only major gap we noticed is the Programs folder which isn't yet customized but then again, it might just be our pre-release unit. The Samsung I8000 Omnia II actually has four different homescreens. They can be alternated by touching the small cubes in the bottom right corner (the cubes are numbered 1 to 3, and the fourth screen comes on when no cube is selected). All four screens are there for the user to fill up with widgets. You can also assign different wallpapers to each homescreen to tell them apart more easily. The widgets are numerous mini applications or shortcuts to different parts of the user interface, sitting in the tray until drawn to the screen. If the user needs to place a new widget on the screen all that has to be done is click the arrow at the bottom left corner of the homescreen and slide the widget bar out. The available widgets vary quite a lot - from digital clock, through image gallery and profile manager to the CNN news application. You can also download additional widgets via the - yeah you guessed that right - the Download Widget. The widgets approach is quite similar to the one we witnessed on the Samsung i900 Omnia but the I8000 Omnia II has two key advantages over its predecessor. For one - the widgets interface has been nicely improved since, both visually and functionally. The other great benefit of the I8000 Omnia II is the fact that this time the Samsung engineers decided to go all the way and customize the interface inside out. While we are pretty confident that the omnipresent TouchFLO 3D interface will be ported to the Samsung I8000 Omnia II sooner or later there is no need to rush with getting it as the handset has quite a lot to offer itself. The handset also has a really neat task manager with cool graphics. It displays a scrollable list of thumbnails representing the currently running programs. You can choose to end a task or switch to it. The new Task Manager is more advanced and is available through the custom Settings menu provided by Samsung. The Task manager not only does it display the currently running processes, but also their RAM and CPU footprint. You can't switch between them however and in this respect it reminds us a lot of the Windows XP/Vista task manager. The good thing is that it's also capable of showing all the currently running system processes. Another pleasing aspect of the Samsung I8000 Omnia II UI is the back button functionality. Placed comfortably under your thumb - on the right-hand side of the device - it takes you one step back throughout the whole menu system. It doesn't however quit running applications. Again, this might have something to do with the pre-release status of our unit since the very button has the X pictogram. All that being said, Samsung I8000 Omnia II has one other novel software feature, which is also a key element of the external design of the handset - it's the Cube that has inspired the big 3D key below the display. Cubes seem to be what every touchscreen phone wants to have when it grows up. Back in the day, the cube interface of the HTC Touch received pretty positive reviews (ours included) and they've been the fad ever since. Now Samsung I8000 Omnia II has taken the whole thing to a whole new level by adding a dedicated button for bringing the cube onto the screen. Unlike the original HTC cube however, the one on the I8000 Omnia II is mostly in charge of the multimedia package on the handset. The Samsung 3D Media gate is an intuitive six-sided cube UI that you flick on screen for quick and easy access to six key features, such as Main menu, Camera, Photo album, Music player, Video player, games or web browser. Even at these early stages, we have to admit the Cube rolls smoothly and usability is on a very good level indeed, reminding of the responsiveness of the LG S-class user interface. But if you are not into flipping cubes, all the shortcuts to the content you're looking for are available as small icons at the bottom of the screen. The music and video player have been nicely revamped. The browser button displays your bookmarks in an innovative way "deck-flipping" manner and starts the Opera web browser once you have made a selection. The program shortcuts menu brings up nine large on-screen shortcuts to some of the most frequently used applications. We are quite curious whether the assortment of shortcuts will be user customizable in the final version of the handset since our pre-release unit didn't offer this kind of functionality. You get phonebook, call log, touch player, clock, camera, touch calendar, task switcher, photo album and settings and that's non-configurable at this point. The Favorite Contacts app allows you to place shortcuts to all your favorite numbers and make them easier and quicker to dial. Yet somehow launching the cube, flipping it to the favorite contacts side and touching a contact doesn't seem all that quick to us. The Samsung Motion gate a.k.a. Motion UI featured on the Samsung I8000 Omnia II is Samsung's own motion recognition engine which brings you access to your multimedia favorites as well as speed dialing just by tapping, tilting or flipping the handset. Motion gate is not part of the cube interface but is another novelty brought by the latest TouchWiz interface. A longer press the Cube button starts the customizable Motion UI interface. Unfortunately Motion Gate didn't work on our early prototype so we are yet to see how the feature works in reality. Samsung have wisely decided to give users a new touch-friendly media player and spare them the inconvenience of installing a third-party one to substitute for the poor default WMPlayer. The Samsung Touch Player handles both video and audio files, supports playlists and has the standard album/artist/tracks sections. There are two main views available in the I8000 Omnia II player. The first one is the Library - at the top you have six tabs: all music, albums, artists, genres, videos plus Now Playing. When you switch into play mode, you see a simple and clean interface. It has the standard music buttons you would expect - volume, next/previous track, play/pause and shuffle, while the album art fills most of the screen above them. The options menu offers the ability to play the music faster/slower or to set the track as a ringtone. Playing video is very simple - it's done the same way as an audio file. The player interface looks the same, but tapping twice turns on the fullscreen mode. It has the same control buttons as the standard one, but everything is changed for landscape orientation and there is no taskbar at the top or empty black spaces. The Touch Player could only handle half of the videos we threw at it due to codec issues, while the third-party paid application Core Player did a perfect job with all of them. Still it's an early version of the software and we're hoping that the retail product will have much wider video support. The Photo Album is the main picture viewing app. It sorts the photos by month and shows the first six from every album. Scrolling is easy as a finger sweep. Selecting an image loads it in a single view where you can zoom or slide to the next one. There are dedicated on-screen buttons for zooming, which toggle on and off automatically. Tapping somewhere on the photo zooms directly on that part. There is, of course, slideshow functionality and you can adjust the direction, slide time and transition effect. It works fine and combined with the huge screen turns the phone into a perfect slideshow device. If you open a picture directly from the file manager, you'll find yourself in the same basic gallery, though you do lose the ability to slide to the next or previous image. The other very intriguing feature in the photo browser was something that we missed the first time. After a few shakes of the phone the whole interface changed into a 4 x 5 grid of pictures sorted by date. You can slide the whole thing just like the standard picture viewer. There is a button to exit and another to bring up an alternative view. This next type of gallery was another surprise for us. It reminds us of the Photo Contacts in the Samsung S5600 but with extended functionality. First of all your photos are collected into a 3D arc and they slightly overlap one another. You scroll them with a sweeping finger gesture,. But that's not all - there is an alternative arc of thumbnails crossing the current one - and it holds the folders. It is not exactly smooth at this point, but the basic idea is commendable. Samsung wants to create a superior photo browsing experience with the help of 3D graphics and an innovative interface. So with a single move you can scroll either the images within a folder or the whole list of folders. Please don't look too critically at the reversed photos and the FPS indicator - it's still an early piece of software and there are occasional bugs like that. We already have great expectations of the whole new WinMo user interface and the 3D cube thing, but adding the new player and gallery raises them even higher. It may as well turn out that Samsung have given their WinMo handset the total interface makeover that Windows Mobile has been needing for quite some time. The Samsung I8000 Omnia II is capable of taking 5 megapixel photos and capturing VGA clips. There is a dual LED flash to assist with low-light pictures and videos. The I8000 camera viewfinder is familiar to us from Omnia HD, Beat DJ, 8300 UltraTouch etc. The comfortable interface is nicely touch-optimized and has all you need in the two vertical taskbars on each side of the viewfinder. The basic options are here - ISO, white balance, default storage, stabilizer, etc. You can see the presence of WDR, which continues to makes its way into many recent Samsung cameraphones. You can switch the default storage between the main memory, the built-in 8 gigs flash and the microSD card. Unfortunately we are unable to provide you with camera samples as our unit had some issues related to its pre-release status. We will of course make up for that as soon as we acquire a more stable device. Since the camera was non-functional, we weren't expecting much from the camcorder, but it worked just fine and we were able to shoot a sample video at VGA@15fps. It's recorded in the inferior 3gp format, rather like on the XPERIA X1. Of course, the whole camera software will surely receive a complete overhaul by the time the I8000 Omnia II hits the shelves. As far as the official; specs go, the Samsung Omnia II should be able to record video at D1@30fps. Our Samsung I8000 Omnia II came with the Opera browser, which makes Internet Explorer Mobile redundant. The Opera 9.5 browser is extensively touch-optimized and seems heavily inspired by the iPhone Safari browser. While the latter won't get Flash support even with the iPhone OS 3.0 expected later this month, the Opera 9.5 browser already has it. Having said that, the Opera 9.5 browser is a great solution but it has its flaws too. For more details check our detailed review of the HTC Touch Diamond. The Samsung I8000 Omnia II comes loaded with additional third-party software to meet various users' needs. It's got regular stuff such as the RSS Reader and Streaming player, but it has some really original applications to go along. You should bear in mind though that the software package might be market-specific. The RSS Reader application is rather self explanatory. It gives you quick access to RSS feeds for staying on top of the latest news and content on your favorite websites. The Podcasts application allows you to subscribe and download video and audio podcasts of your choice. And finally, the Picture Frame application allows you to use the I8000 Omnia II as a digital picture frame with highly customizable content. Besides displaying a slide show of images in landscape mode, the Picture Frame also offers a total of 5 different clock/date styles. You can have music playing in the background too and, if needed, event alerts such as incoming message or alarms can be suppressed when the Digital Frame is running. Furthermore, the interface of the application is highly touch optimized. The Samsung I8000 Omnia II arrived with a pre-loaded app called Application Download, granting you access to Samsung's app store. Of course, here comes again the inevitable comparison to the App Store. The structure and the whole idea screams "App Store" but that's according to expectation. Applications are displayed into several tabs - Recommended, Hot and Category. You can also see all downloaded items or to search for new ones. Before you download an app you can read its detailed description and check its rating. The Samsung I8000 Omnia II will feature a built-in GPS receiver that can be used by multiple applications running at the same time. There is also A-GPS support for much faster satellite lock upon cold start thanks to current satellite data downloaded over Wi-Fi or the 2G/3G network. With its huge 3.7" display the I8000 Omnia II has the potential to be a very cool GPS navigator. It would have been nice if there was a pre-loaded GPS navigation app but since there isn't you'll have to purchase one separately. Google Maps however is already on-board, so you can always use that as a stop-gap. Since our Samsung I8000 Omnia II was a beta-unit and the GPS receiver didn't work with Google Maps we'll share our impressions of the GPS navigation capabilities of the I8000 Omnia II in its full review. Still, considering its large 3.7" touchscreen, powerful CPU and large-capacity battery, we expect them to be pretty positive. All of you know that Windows Mobile devices are not everyone's cup of tea but somehow Samsung managed to change the way we used to look at WinMo powered handsets with only one model. A beta unit, by the way. The UI is very responsive and easy to get on well with. And all standard WinMo applications have been not just redesigned. More accurate is to say "recreated". They are much more touch-friendly now and feel so not WinMo. Yep, there was no stylus compartment (obviously it'll come as a dongle) but who'll need a stylus anyway when you have such a well thought touch-optimized UI? Well, having all that said, we shouldn't forget that the competition isn't sleeping, too. That's the spot to mention the name of HTC Touch Diamond2, which impresses with its more refined look but looses points in terms of productivity. However, the HTC Touch Diamond2 features the eyecatching TouchFLO 3D user interface which went through a long way in its evolution to come back after a good facelift. The TouchFLO 3D pretends to be very user-friendly, too. And in fact it really is. But you can't compare it with the I8000 Omnia II. The feeling is just way different. Another name that surfaces in our minds is the Omnia HD (or just i8910 HD. Whatever.). With different OS and UI, you might say it doesn't belong in here. And does it? Of course. Even if the I8000 Omnia II managed to change the WinMo completely behind the fresh look there's still the old WinMo. With all of its flaws. So if can't live with WinMo, live without it and go for the the i8910 with its Symbian OS. There's even one more alternative to the devices running on the Windows Mobile OS. The Android powered Samsung I7500. Even if that platform is still immature it gets better day after day. By the way, if you can't deal with operating systems at all there are two other options only for you - the other Samsung S8000 Jet and LG KM900 Arena. So, summa summarum, the Samsung I8000 Omnia II turned out as a very good surprise and we are more than impatient for its retail version to arrive at our office for an in-depth reviewSamsung I8000 Omnia II 360-degree view
Design and construction
Samsung I8000 Omnia II and Apple iPhone side by side
The display looks great in the dark
As big a screen as they could fit, 0.2" bigger than the iPhone's, but AMOLED
The buttons on the front are large and easy to hit
Videocall camera and oversized ambient light sensor
One rocker on each side plus a hardware OK button
The microUSB slot, audio jack and the power button
The back looks bare and cheap
The microSD card slot is hot-swappable but under the rear cover
Samsung I8000 in the hand
Size comparison: Apple iPhone vs. Samsung I8000The proprietary TouchWiz user interface
Samsung have done a good job of customizing the UI
Four different screens mean four time as much space for the widgetsWindows Mobile beyond recognition
The task manager gets launched by pressing one of the side keys
The new Task managerThe Samsung 3D Media gate
The cube launcher is pretty nice 
The video players and the web browser sub-menus in the cube launcher
More shortcuts are hiding insideMotion gate a.k.a. Motion UI
The proprietary Samsung Motion gate interfaceTwo in one - the new Touch Player
The Touch Player
Playing an audio track
The music player options
The video playerOne hell of a gallery
The Photo Album
Zooming in on different parts of a photo
The slideshow options
The grid view
The 3D arc view
The two intersecting arcs - picture rotation and folder rotationA camera well done
The camera interface
Camera options
The camcorder interfaceTouch-centric web browser with true Flash support
The web browser offers full Flash supportAll the software aboard
The RSS Reader and the Podcasts manager
The Digital Frame app and the various ways of displaying information - it even shows your appointments on the calendarApplication Download… or just another App Store
Take a look at Samsung's app storeA cool GPS navigator to be
Viewing a map on the Samsung I8000 Omnia II (Google Maps, Rome)First impressions
HTC Touch Diamond2
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD
Samsung I7500
