Samsung Omnia i900

On paper, at least, Samsung’s newest smartphone, the Omnia i900, looks good. It comes with a five megapixel camera, as well as Wi-Fi, GPS, and HSDPA, as well as, of course, a music player – in other words, everything you’d expect on the latest mobile phones.

The downside is that it’s powered by Windows 6.1 Mobile, which is far from the best or fastest operating system on the market, and it shows, even though Samsung has overlaid it with its own interface. That does make things somewhat better, especially when navigating from the home screen.

Of course, there are a few pluses to Windows Mobile, notably support for Outlook, Exchange, and Office, but that’s often outweighed by the clunkiness of the system, and the need for a stylus, since responsive to fingers is too high.

The music player, though, does respond easily to finger pressure, although there’s the mysterious omission of a 3.5mm headphone jack, which should really be de rigeur on every mobile phone these days.

What about that camera? At five megapixels it should be capable of taking crisp, clear pictures, but a number of mobile phone reviews have carped at the disappointing quality of the images produced.

As to memory, the Samsung Omnia does come with 16GB of memory on board. That’s more than enough for most people, although a card slot for more would have helped the phone a great deal.

The only people likely to be convinced by this model are those needing Windows Mobile, and even then it’s likely to be a tough sell.