Windows Phone might be Nokia's new daaahling, but not every company is putting all their eggs into its basket. Samsung, for example, has Windows Phone handsets but is also a big fan of Android and of its own bada smartphone operating system.
Still, Samsung has released two Windows Phone smartphones, and the Omnia W is the second. It runs Windows Phone 7.5 (also known as Mango).
Side-by-side, the Omnia W is a lot smaller than the Omnia 7 that was launched when Windows Phone was announced, and a lot cheaper, too. Clove, who kindly gave us a sample to review, is selling it for £294 SIM-free, while the original Omnia 7 is still going for a shade under £500.
Here at Know Your Mobile we've been known to say before that less is more, and we're saying it again here and in more ways than one. The Samsung Omnia W has a smaller footprint than the Omnia 7. It has a 3.7-inch 800x480 pixel screen as opposed to the Omnia 7's 4 inch screen, but offers the same pixel count. That means tighter, sharper imaging here, which we like.
The smaller screen also means the Samsung Omnia W fits rather neatly in small hands and in the average pocket. We've got dainty digits ourselves, and we had no trouble flicking through emails and tweets while standing on a wobbling, swerving bus. For the record, then, this handset measures 116x59x11mm and it weights 115g.
Despite the price difference, the Samsung Omnia W isn't cut down in core specs terms. In fact it takes things up a notch on the old Omnia 7. The processor, for example, runs at 1.4Ghz while the Omnia 7's runs at 1Ghz. We found it to be smooth and it gave us no trouble.
Then there's the camera - a 5-megapixel main snapper capable of shooting 720p video, and a VGA front camera for video calling. The Omnia 7 could only boast a single camera, and had no video calling capability.
Where both handsets fall down, in our view, is a lack of memory expansion. That's a Windows Phone thing rather than a Samsung thing - Windows Phone handsets simply don't support memory expansion because Microsoft doesn't want performance affected by slow expansion cards.
So this means you've got 8GB of on board storage, of which 6.4GB is available for whatever it is you want to tote around. In the days of 32GB microSD cards, this seem extremely limited to us, and we can't wait for Microsoft to leap into the 21st Century and allow memory expansion. Of course, it's worth remembering Microsoft offers 25GB of free SkyDrive cloud storage, 21GB more than Apple gives away.
Another thing we can't wait for Microsoft to do is build Flash support into Windows Phone. The browsing experience is just too hampered for us to really enjoy without it.
And while we are griping, we know many people have their calendar and contact in the jolly old cloud these days, but actually some people still want desktop sync. Apple and Android can manage to offer that, but Microsoft can't. It's cloud or nothing. Only multimedia can be synchronised via a cabled connection to a computer.
Still, this is a Windows Phone and with Windows Phone, them's the breaks.
There's nothing at all of note about the user interface that hasn't been said many times. Microsoft locks this down so that the tile based Start screen looks similar from one Windows Phone handset to the next. You can personalise things by pinning apps links, web bookmarks, Bing map locations, tunes, and so on to it, but the blocky look doesn't change. Nor do the hubs which you scroll horizontally to get around.
Samsung has thrown a few apps in to spice things up. MiniDiary seems a little odd. You can make entries that are tagged with your location and the weather, and can include photos, drawn images and voice notes as well as text. It's an okay app if you like diaries, and it has been designed to look like a Windows Phone hub so you horizontally scroll to get around content.
Other than MiniDiary, we like what we see. Photo Studio is an image editor that lets you easily share snaps to Photobucket, Picasa and Facebook. Funshots adds effects before you shoot a photo. Framing images using a range of deformation effects is a great way to waste time, and because you can use the front camera as well as the back you can squish your face into all sorts of odd contortions. Well, we found it fun.
Then there's AllShare, which is Samsung's DLNA app for sharing photos, video and music over Wi-Fi. It's not the most inspirational set of extras we've ever seen, but it does liven Windows Phone up a bit.
And that, maybe, points to our biggest issue with the Samsung Omnia W. It has a pretty nondescript build - black, blocky, slightly curved corners. It has average battery life, with a 1500mAh battery that should see you past a day's usage but probably not past two days. It runs Windows Phone 7.5 and that can't be played with very much by handset makers. It also has no memory expansion.
In short, the Samsung Omnia W is well priced and has a good processor and a front camera, but it's nothing special in the aesthetics department. Unless you need video calling capability, the Nokia Lumia 710 better value - but not by much.
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