With all the hoopla going on about the 3G iPhone, there’s bound to be a lot of interest in other handsets that deliver a similar experience without buying into the proprietary vision and “reality distortion field” that Apple’s Steve Jobs projects.
By some odd quirk of fate, I will be finding myself at the Communicasia 2008 trade show in Singapore this week. One of the items I will be eagerly making a beeline for will be the Samsung i900 Omnia, which will be making its debut at the event.
Samsung’s Omnia will be poised as an iPhone competitor in many respects – it has that all glass surface and touch screen interface fully intended to be poked at with a finger, not a stylus. It even has the same rounded edges.
The main difference is of course the OS – which determines what apps we might see running on this device. Apple’s OS X rules the roost at iPhone land, while the Omnia is firmly in the Windows Mobile camp.
But what attracted me most are the connectivity specs, which I’ll reproduce in full here:
- 2G Network: GSM 850/900/1800/1900
- 3G Network: HSDPA 850/1900/2100
- HSDPA Support up to 7.2 MBPS
- Wi-Fi : 802.11 b/g
- Blietooth with A2DP for Stereo headsets
So what we have here is a true world phone, with not just the usual quadband GSM specs, but tri-band HSDPA as well. Just like the 3G iPhone.
That’s going to be significant late this year. We’re used to 2100 mHz support for HSDPA in our parts of the world, but the 850 MHz band is being adapted by some countries outside of its usual bailiwick in North America. So handsets that support this band for HSDPA are going to be in great demand.
Running this baby at a full 7.2 mbps? That’s over three times faster than my DSL connection! Well, maybe we’ll get a chance to see that in action at Singapore in a few days.
The Ayson Chronicles 
My complaint about the Iphone is, the audio out when talking
to someone is so weak. Hopefully the audio out on the
i900 will be much louder.. I have a moderate amount of
high freq. hearing loss. My Sanyo 8400 is plenty loud.
If the Samsung is as loud as my Sanyo, I’ll buy one.
Ok, now that this phone is out, discerning people would like to know if this is REALLY a triband 3G phone. I’m looking to import this thing in the U.S. Jim, can you confirm if this is truly triband 3G?
I’ve been following almost every forum thread about the Omnia and there seems to be lots of confusion and misleading reviews.
The Omnia is in fact Triband voice but single band for data (2100) which makes it Europe/Asia only for data.
Of course you can still use it in North America for voice calls, but for data you’ll have to settle on EDGE only which is a shame.
It appears that the Omnia is not really that “everthing” after all, but still remains a “wish” for all of us on this side of the pond.