Recently I upgraded my old Motorola phone that I'd had for five or so years and finally got the Samsung Omnia that I had had my eye on. Verizon had it for a great price and I'd read nothing but good reviews of it. I've had the phone for nearly three months now, and I think I've experienced the good and the bad. I'm a bit annoyed that Verizon released the Droid literally days after I ordered the Omnia, but such is the way of things.
I've discovered that the Omnia doesn't have one feature that every modern smartphone should have. You can't voice-dial with a headset. In this age of laws requiring hands-free calling, for a phone to force one to look at it while dialing is inexcusable. In Washington, where I live, and in Oregon, where I was last weekend, one must use headsets while driving. Admittedly, once you've made the call, the phone switches seamlessly to the headset, but dialing while driving is illegal.
Other annoyances with the phone include the "standard" interface provided by Samsung. Many people love it. It provides a vertical bar containing many widgets that can be dragged out onto the desktop. There are a couple of problems with this bar however, not the least of which is how much it drags while scrolling. Scrolling the bar to a new icon will cause one to wonder whether you actually scrolled the bar at all. In addition, one is extremely limited as to what can be added to the bar. Install a new program? Good luck adding it to the bar.
It's hard not to compare the phone to Apple's iPhone. I have an iPod Touch, so I'm familiar with its interface, and the Omnia's keyboard can't compare. Somehow, even though the on-screen keyboard is roughly the same size, the Omnia has managed to make its keys feel much more cramped. The iPhone also does some interesting things with predictive typing, such as changing a double-space into a period and a space.
All in all, while I could live with the Omnia, I think I'm going to call Verizon to see if I'm still in my returnability time-frame and see if I can't get the Droid instead. I've heard nothing but good things about it. I'm going to have to find out about controlling it by the headset first, though.
Edit: I discovered that i'm not any smarter than my phone. Apparently I need to hold down the call button on the headset in order to make a voice call. I was just tapping the button, which is how one answers a call.
