Samsung Omnia HD – the world’s first High Def phone
Samsung have launched a revolutionary phone at MWC 2009 in the shape of the Samsung Omnia HD. As you can probably guess from the title, the OmniaHD is all about High Def – literally, 720p High Def video viewing. You might wonder whether you’d notice the difference on a screen so small, but apparently you can, helped in part by the fact that the screen’s quality is fantastic.
The screen itself is a 3.7″ monster, with AMOLED display technology, 16:9 ratio and a 360 x 640 pixel. It’s this that helps the OmniaHD produce such startlingly good pictures. Well, the screen and also the display chip inside it that can genuinely display HD video.
The OmniaHD will also record at 720p HD as well at 24 frames per second, making it the first mobile phone with HD video recording and playback in the world!
If only that were all, though, but no, Samsung decided to throw pretty much every feature known to man in the OmniaHD – check out the features list after the jump.
Samsung OmniaHD overview
As well as a fantastic screen and glorious HD playback and recording, the Samsung OmniaHD also offers the following:
- General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/1900/2100 MHz, GPRS/EDGE class 12, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
- Form factor: Touchscreen bar
- Dimensions: 123 x 58 x 12.9 mm
- Display: 3.7-inch 16M color OLED touchscreen, 640 x 360 pixels
- Memory: Up to 48GB of storage, enough for 35 DVD films
- OS: Symbian S60 5th edition
- Camera: 8 megapixel auto focus camera with LED flash, geo-tagging, Face detection, Smile Shot, Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) and HD video recording at 24 fps
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS and optional Samsung Mobile Navigator by Route66, HDMI (dongle needed)
- Misc: Accelerometer for screen auto rotate, Proximity sensor for auto screen turn-off, FM radio with RDS, DivX/XviD video support
- Battery: 1500 mAh battery
Oddly, despite the huge camera and superb video recording abilities, the Omnia HD only comes with an LED flash, which is simply useless. Hopefully this will change to at least a dual LED flash upon its release.
A couple of things to note from this little list: the OmniaHD supports DivX and XviD video playback, and can connect to your HDTV via HDMI for true High Def video from your mobile phone. It also comes not only with HSDPA, giving you 7.2Mbps for ultra-fast downloads, it also comes with 5.76 HSUPA, giving you a whopping 5.76Mbps upload speeds as well.
Why you do need fast upload speeds? Well, HD video isn’t exactly small, so if you’re going to upload your HD videos to a Web site such as YouTube, you’re going to need a fat pipe if you don’t want to be waiting around all day!
The Samsung Omnia HD has been one of the stars of MWC 2009. A mobile phone offering HD-quality video and the best screen on the market today, coupled with an array of features that take your breath away, means that Samsung genuinely are leading through innovation.
The only downside is the user interface, which looks OK, but not great. Judge for yourself in the video above.
