When I tried the 
Feb 17, 2009 04:40 AM
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When I tried the original Omnia I said it had "a poorly designed interface, lousy response time, buggy software, and it felt cheap and fat on my hand." The Omnia HD changes some things.
The Samsung Omnia HD still has the same lousy response when it comes to the touch part, even while its screen is capacitive instead of resistive. Many times, the phone will fail responding at the touch. And when it didn't fail, sometimes the software registered the click but it didn't respond. The unit was pre-release, but I found the same problem with all the Samsung phones in display (the Beat DJ and the Ultra Touch). I just hope it's just a beta thing, but I find hard to believe all these phones have such problems with the most basic feature in its design.
And it is too bad, because the Omnia HD has a lot of good qualities hardware wise. Besides de two built-in speakers—which can get really loud, although obviously they are not hi-fi material—, the 8GB/16GB built-in memory, the 32GB microSD memory expansion card slot, or the wireless video and DLNA connectivity, the really amazing thing is the high resolution AMOLED screen. The quality of this QHD 16:9 screen is simply mindblowing. I haven't seen any telephone—-or any other device, for that matter—which such a clear, colorful screen. The vision angle is amazing, and no matter how much you turn it, the color and contrast remain the same.
The other big feature of the Omnia HD is the video recording in high definition: 720p at 24 frames per second. The quality was really good and clear. Granted, it's not film material, but it's hard to believe you can obtain such an amazing picture quality from such a small device.
If Samsung could get their touchscreen act together and get a decent operating system on top of this (Android or maybe Windows Mobile 6.5), they would have a winner. But as long as first hands on impressions go, this great hardware is still in need of matching software.
Send an email to Jesus Diaz, the author of this post, at jesus@gizmodo.com.
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