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Samsung Omnia W I8350 Review

Price
Euro150

Samsung Omnia W I8350 Review

Samsung Omnia W I8350 Review

Introduction

Samsung Omnia W I8350 is an attempt of Samsung to sort of in power-saving approach in the joint venture with Microsoft. Although the Omnia W 18350 has not drawn all such attention towards itself as a result of blowing the numbers out of proportion. The new Samsung Omnia W I8350 is tied in with a Super-sized 3.7-inch AMOLED and has a WVGA resolution of 480 x 800 pixels along with 16 million colors over and above Samsung Omnia W I8350 is reinforced by the Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon with a clock speed 1.4 GHz Single Core. It is also supported by Adreno 205 GPU to support the performance, all of which were progressively more being supplied with 512MB of RAM.

Physically, Samsung Omnia W I8350 weighs around 115.3 g with the dimension of 115.6 x 58.8 x 10.9 mm, this is although light but a bit thicker if you compare it with the other products by Samsung. Samsung Omnia W I8350 runs Windows OS Phone 7.5 Mango that appears to possess little application that can be downloaded in order to boost the functionality. However over time, in particular after Nokia took the Windows Operating System Phone as their foremost smartphone, it is not unfeasible that the future will be flourishing this platform for example Android and IOS.

What Is In The Box?

While unboxing the Samsung Omnia W I8350, you will find below mentioned accessories with the handset.

  • Standard issue MicroUSB cable
  • Charging adapter
  • Dedicated 3.5mm headset
  • The phone itself
  • Memory card is omitted for apparent reasons and this is a big downfall.

Design & Build Quality

The Omnia W I8350 possesses a clean design and a solid build. Although somewhat the design of the Omnia gives a hint of the original Omnia 7 styling if you see the angular front and backward receding edges. But, on the other hand the Samsung Omnia W 18350 successfully keeps a neutral and professional appearance at the same time as setting itself apart from the great deal of curvy Samsung droids.

Advantages

  • The handset keeps a neutral yet very professional look that ultimately sets itself apart from the other Samsung curvy droids.
  • The screen size of the Omnia W is 3.7" screen which is a unambiguous advantage over some phones by the competition.
  • The handset holds great contrast, deep blacks, and praiseworthy outdoor performance thanks to its WVGA (480 x 800) resolution and Super AMOLED quality display.
  • Although WP7 does not natively allow video calls however Samsung have discovered a workaround thus video calls are possible on Omnia W I8350.
  • The most famous cross-platform app Tango is also available on this new smart cell phone.
  • Power or Lock button that is placed on the right side of the Samsung Omnia near the top and a soft and responsive shutter key along with the camera button is there that overrides the screen lock in order to launch the camera in just the matter of few seconds.
  • The 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery is cited at 370h of stand-by and 7h of talk time. You can typically rely on its battery for 2 straight days with the usual internet serving via Wi-Fi, a few hours of video playback as well as the normal amount of stills and videos.
  • Furthermore, the power efficient AMOLED screen technologies as well as the single core architecture of the Omnia are not among the battery drainer.

Disadvantages

  • Non expandable storage and no mass storage are the things that the Omnia W lacks.

User Interface & Windows Phone Mango

Since the Samsung Omnia W runs Windows Phone Mango, you can also call it the known puberty of an OS (Operating System) that although is not quite there yet it feels somewhat more mature at the moment. The handset uses Tile system which is known as Metro interface - one of the simplistic and tremendously easy to navigate and use interface.

Advantages

  • Lock screen can be revealed by pushing the unlock button and displays the current time, date, calendar events, emails and missed calls. The background of the lock screen is changeable.
  • The live tile Metro user interface is an extremely elegant vertical grid of Live tiles that can be reorganized depending on your preferences. You can put approximately anything in the grid by choosing the Pin to start option.
  • There is a virtual Search button making finding out apps much easier especially for those who have installed loads of apps. On the other hand, you can just swipe the screen up and down to discover what you are searching. You can pin the selected item to the home screen by tapping and holding on any of the apps.
  • Some of the apps support multitasking while some don't. Apps that support multitasking will resume on reopening from where you have paused them while the apps that do not support multitasking will restart or reset themselves and start from the beginning. This way, they help in improved battery life and UI performance.
  • In order to save battery, you can disable the multitasking. While disabling the multitasking, you will find a list of all those apps that support multitasking.

Disadvantages

  • The task manager looks somewhat similar to the Symbian's or WebOS and merely is an app switcher that displays all of you presently opened apps.

The Omnia W & The Media

In this section, we will investigate the audio quality, photos, video playback and FM radio performance of the Samsung Omnia W. Overall, audio quality of the handset is comparatively clean, but pretty quiet. The FM radio worked out quite well and was able to get pretty decent reception in most locations. The music has a simple and straightforward interface. You won't have any difficulties using it. However there are some things missing, like an equalizer.

Advantages

  • Barely an inspiring musician, the Samsung Omnia W I8350 still does sufficiently well to make all users happy, excluding the most demanding users out there.
  • The Samsung Omnia W I8350 stereo crosstalk when connected with a pair of headphones increases as well as the intermodulation distortion also rises. Overall, it is a decent performance but the volume levels are pretty low once again.
  • One of the most visually attractive elements in the Windows Phone's arsenal is the picture hub and is quite dense with animations, transitions and more. You can set a single photo as a background for the hub or else you can set it to shuffle different photos.
  • New apps can be easily integrated into the Pictures hub to create more visually appealing results.
  • The camera roll unites your complete collection of photos and videos, taken with the Samsung Omnia W I8350, in a grid of 4x5. However, you cannot alter the view of the camera roll but viewing a photo can be performed in either portrait or landscape mode.

Disadvantages

  • The most bothersome feature of using any WP7 device is Zune. Similar to iTunes, you require the Zune PC software in order to transfer media from side to side to a WP7 device.
  • For video playback, either you need to convert files to a WP7 friendly format for the Samsung Omnia W I8350 or bear the terribly slow transfer speed seeing that the software transfers your files to a suitable format for the player to read
  • The Omnia W also lacks is enhancement features of the music players. There are no presets, per se to make any modifications to audio output. Solitary, the Samsung Omnia W offers reasonably decent audio quality, although the decibel level is a little low if you compare it to other WP7 devices available in the market.

Camera & Connectivity Features

The handset contains a wide angle camera, to be precise the Samsung Omnia W is equipped with a 5 MP camera with auto focus, Geo-tagging, image stabilization as well as a single LED flash. With such a powerful camera, you can capture photos of up to 2592 x 1944 pixels resolution. Apart from that, the handset comes with support for EDGE/GPRS Wi-Fi and DLNA support as well via Samsung's AllShare app that's preloaded.

Advantages

  • The camera UI is pretty simple with a viewfinder and some controls on the right, still/video camera toggle, virtual zoom buttons and an extended settings menu.
  • The camera on the Samsung Omnia W performs well but it does prefer very low ISO values. Overall it does produce good results with good colors and nice detail with low noise.
  • The macro performance of the Samsung Omnia is quite impressive as the phone will take the hint even if you forget to set the right mode.
  • The UI for video camera is identical to the still camera UI with sufficient features too including ability to use scenes, saturation and sharpness, calibrate contrast, change the white balance or exposure compensation as well as you can also add image effects, and can also use the LED as a video light as well.
  • The Omnia W 720p video recording is the finest that a Windows Phone can do for the moment, thus the Omnia W follows ensemble. And it is by no means a bad quality cap rather it is just the economy of on-board storage for majority of people that is persuasive enough for them to opt for HD over Full HD.
  • The Samsung Omnia W bears quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support in addition to dual-band 3G with HSPA (14.4Mbps downlink and 5.76Mbps uplink). The local connectivity is covered by Wi-Fi b/g/n with DLNA and stereo Bluetooth 2.1. Though, Bluetooth is there with A2DP, but of course sharing pictures or videos via this medium is not on the cards.
  • Hotspot functionality of Wi-Fi is brought to you by Mango, thus you simply need an active SIM card with a data connection and you're all set.
  • You can upload your photos and videos to your Microsoft Sky Drive account, send it via email or share it on Facebook, Twitter or WhatsApp, PhotoBucket, Picasa.
  • Internet Explorer for the mobile is truly a well-designed browser and is quite capable of providing you with a rich browsing experience.
  • Social Networking integration is quite solid and embedded quite well into the various relevant aspects of the handset.

Disadvantages

  • An added or extra SD storage is not offered on Windows Phone for that reason the Omnia W doesn't offer such an option.
  • The only way to transfer files directly between your computer and your Windows Phone is via the Zune computer application that lets you sync with a computer and there is no Mass storage mode.

Should I Buy Samsung Omnia W I8350?

The Samsung Omnia W rather than aiming high makes itself contented in a comparatively new terrain for Windows Phone. Not nonsensically full with specifications although solidly built and with sufficient personality. Powered by a 1.4GHz Snapdragon and showing off a Super AMOLED screen, the Omnia W has a sufficient amount of an edge over the main competition. The Omnia W has a smaller screen and less storage capacity as compared to its predecessor and the groused up processor cannot quite make up for that. On the whole, the Omnia W media prowess could have been better and does not live up to the standard that Samsung has set for itself.

The bottom line is that the Samsung Omnia W is the cheapest and most ideal Windows Phone 7 available right now keeping the price of the handset in mind. The phone offers loads of specs. On the other hand, if we take overall functionality into account, we are not very much impressed and this connotes that you would not be missing too much if you prefer to go for another Windows Phone 7 device, at the moment even though if it costs you a little bit more.