Samsung Omnia W is mid-range WP7 smartphone that is pretty much identical to the Samsung Focus Flash. It’s a mid-range smartphone powered by a single core 1.4 GHz CPU, has a 3.7” SuperAMOLED display and a decent set of features.

Samsung Omnia W specifications

The Samsung Omnia W is lightweight and compact handset. It measures 115.6 x 58.8 x 10.9 and weighs 115 grams. It’s very comfortable to hold and use. It also has a metal back cover and an overall premium feel. The front of the device holds the 3.7” SuperAMOLED display with a 480*800 resolution and 252 ppi. The colors are great looking and saturated but a bit on the cool side, contrast is high, images and text look sharp enough and it has no problems even in direct sunlight. Above the display we have the three keys, a physical home button, and capacitive key Back and search. Above the display we have the ambient light sensor and a secondary VGA camera.

The left side holds the volume rocker while the right side holds the lock/power key and the dedicated camera key. On top we have only the 3.5mm jack while the bottom holds the microphone and microUSB port. On the back we have a 5 MPx camera with LED flash and the loudspeaker. Removing the battery cover gives us access to the 1500 mAh battery that gives the Samsung Omnia W 6.5 hours of talk time in 3G and 380 hours of stand-by time.

The 1.4GHz CPU makes the Windows Phone OS runs smoothly and without any stuttering. Every tile, menu and button responds almost instantly. The Omnia W runs Windows Phone Mango out of the box. This means you get multi-tasking, heavy social network integration, Internet Explorer 9 and a lot of new feats. Switching between apps can be done by holding the back button. This shows a side by side view of all the running apps. Switching is done very fast for most apps but some third party apps tend to lag a bit.
 
Windows Phone Mango also brings a History tab which shows all the communication you had with any of the contacts, this includes calls, texts, social networking, emails and so on. The Me hub helps you manage all your social networks. From the Me hub you can post messages, update your status, check in at your location and so on.
 

Other apps include the Calendar app that can sort all your accounts into sub calendars that can be color coded for easier use, Microsoft Office Mobile and Bing search with song recognition and QR scanner. You also get the SkyDrive service which consists of 25GB of free cloud storage space for all your documents, photos, music and videos.

Third party preloaded apps include AllShare which enables you to share media to another device over DLNA, Photo Studio for basic image editing, RSS reader, Fun Shot app to add some funny effects to photos and the Now application which shows the weather, news and stocks with its own live tile on the home screen.

The Messaging app puts together in a threaded arrangement your text messages, Facebook and Windows Life messages. The email app also has threaded view and keeps all your email accounts into one app. They keyboard is very effective and user friendly. Having a 3.7” display means that the keys will be big enough and well spaced to allow a fast typing speed.

The 5MP camera with LED flash and autofocus takes pretty good pictures. Colors are accurate, details are sufficient, contrast is good and the noise level is acceptable. However indoor pictures have a problem with color balance and noise but the flash solves most of the problems at the price of a yellow tint.
 

Video recording is done at 720p @ 30fps. You get a set of scene modes and effects that can be applied both to images and videos. Videos recorded have a good amount of exposure and details, audio recording is also good but just like the photo captures, colors tend to be more on the cool side and the digital noise is higher.
 
The Zune music player and the Music+videos hub offer a very good multimedia experience. The hub allows you to subscribe and download podcast and create your own playlist. You also get the Smart DJ song recommendation function. In terms of storage you only get 6.67 GB of internal memory that cannot be expanded.

Video playback is smooth most of the times but on MPEG-4 videos with 720p resolution it lags a bit. Also it lacks DivX/XviD support. On the bright side movies look great on the 3.7” SuperAMOLED display.

In terms of connectivity offers quad band GSM, dual band 3G with HSPA, Wi-Fi, GPS with A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, FM Radio with RDS and microUSB. Unfortunately it lacks a microHDMI port and mass storage mode. This means you will have to install Zune software to communicate with the device.

Internet Explorer 9 mobile browser runs very smooth thanks to the hardware acceleration and the new JavaScript engine. Microsoft claims that IE9 Mobile is the fast browser when it comes to everyday surfing. Zooming and panning run very smooth, text reflow is automatic and responsiveness is very good. The only bad side is the lack of support for Adobe Flash. But considering the fact that Adobe are ditching Flash on favor of HTML5 and IE9 handles HTML5 content easily it might not be such a bad thing.
 
Samsung Omnia W is a very well balanced, well equipped mid range handset with flawless performance despite lacking a dual core CPU. It also has a great set of features, a nice looking design and a good price. In terms of competition we have the Windows Phone running HTC Radar and the Android powered Samsung Galaxy W or Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray.