The comparison is like "day and night"! I decided to buy the much heralded Samsung Omnia - the iPhone lookalike, if not for anything else but to see how close the Apple rivals manage to get their product to the "real thing". Samsung has done very well since the early days of manufacturing cheap OEM electronic products. Its marketing prowess and product innovation has come a long way. I would actually buy a samsung product without much hesitation these days. I started 4 years ago by buying a samsung refrigerator and today it still sit nicely in my dry kitchen and still very much in style.With the same vibe, I decided to acquire the samsung omnia yesterday. Even though I know that the new 3G iPhone is on its way to Singapore, I thought to myself "nothing to lose, such rave reviews at CommunicAsia 2008, much be worth some salt... otherwise I will just appreciate the new iPhone more when it is available".
I got the phone from Singtel at $268 with 2 years plan. Out of the box, the phone looks like an iPhone, I might say "not bad". The phone has a touch screen that vibrates when you touch it, a new feeling and can actually scroll as you move you finger across the screen. But the feel is different - the difference has been what windows can do, Apple does it better. The best thing that I like about the Omnia is that it has an attached GPS function - something that I relish for some time already. Again I told myself, if it does not work well as a phone, I will use it as a dedicated GPS in my car.
The worst thing happened... in less than 18 hours, the phone crashed on me 5 times. Each time, the screen would go blank and the only way for me to get it to work again is to remove the battery and insert it again - much like a hard reset. To do it once, I am ok, to do twice, I started to worry but when the phone crashed 5 times, I packed the whole thing into its box and headed back to Singtel Hello shop determined to get an exchange.The process at Singtel was however hassle free. The technician also could not get the phone to start up and within a few minutes gave me a new Samsung Omnia in exchange. This time so far the phone worked perfectly. The experience and functioning of the phone interface while similar to the first was somewhat different from the first. Everything worked out of the box!
My conclusion is that the samsung Omnia is a fairly good phone - well designed, good functionalities but when you put the phone side by side with the iPhone (I used to own the 16G iPhone, so I can compare), it is really "Day and Night". There is NO COMPARISON!The attention to detail that Steve Job and the crew at Apple put into the iPhone has truly distinguished itself. the screen flow, the little touches has made iPhone a phone that is not only pretty but a leader of the class.
So for the people thinking about Samsung Omnia, I would say unless money is no object, wait for the new 3G iPhone from Apple. It will be worth the wait!
3 comments:
I share your sentiments about having your phone died on you. I was using the O2 and in ONE HOUR, it crashed (blue screen) more than 5 times. I decided to chuck it and bought a touch diamond yesterday. Let's hope this one lasts and works!
By the way, the screen-scroll function is really cool!
wow, i like the htc diamond too. it was actually my first choice but then i chickened out. there was a review of the touch diamond in DigitalLife yesterday - quite good reviews except that u need to install some patches as the screen flow can get quite slow after a while. enjoy the phone. thanks for being the first person to put a comment on my blog!!
I know what you mean by the lag using touchflo. Everything just became slower when in that mode. I alternate between touchflo (when i need weather) and the non-touchflo mode.
Have you reserved your iPhone? Apparently Google is coming up with their own phones soon in 2010 or something. I don't know, maybe they will open up a Google Burger some day.....
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