Update 21/12/2009:

In light of the current state of the mobile phone market, the final score of the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD had already seen its score fall from four to three stars.  Because it won't be upgraded to the next version of Android OS and the bugs that exist in the current version, it's lost another star to fall to a final score of two stars.

Samsung continues to perfect and refine its range. After the 8 Mpixel Pixon and the One, a small entry level touch phone, we now have the first mobile that can film and play HD videos. With a fat tech spec and a stand-alone price tag of around 400 pounds, the i8910 has all the looks of a very high-end model. When you first look at it, it certainly is impressive with its 16:9 AMOLED 3.7 inch touch screen. But does it live up to its promise?




A large chassis

When you open its box, you can’t but be surprised at the girth of the i8910. What a big boy! When you get used to holding it and pressing a few buttons however, you’ll find the build proportionate. Its design is pretty standard: black lacquered and metal-style plastic buttons. Nothing out of the ordinary then.

Fingerprints show up all too easily on the casing and we would have preferred the ring around the camera lens to be black. As it is, you notice it too much. Why not just go all out for the bare and sober style?

In spite of the abundance of plastic (for such a pricey phone), it has a quality finish overall. Good to see the phone lock button on the side.

A few words on the very nice and large capacitive AMOLED screen. What results! The quality of the display does not disappoint: the colours are very bright and contrasted and the viewing angles very open. Of course, in full sunlight, it does get a little harder to read, like most other mobiles. Another advantage of AMOLED screens is that they use less energy than LCDs. This means that the phone ought to have a longer battery life. In practice however its endurance is nothing exceptional. The i8910 is average for this type of multifunction phone, lasting a good day and a half before it needs recharging.

A replacement for your HD video camera?

Mobile phones development goes hand in hand with digital camera development. This is to be expected as the favourite additional function of mobile phone users is the camera. However, phones are a few years behind digital cameras. 8 Mpixel contacts came on the market towards the end of 2005. It has taken three years to see phones match this. Of course, photo quality does not depend only on the number of pixels. That would be too simple. Beware of the marketing speel spouted by the manufacturers!

HD video capture technology first became a feature on compacts at the beginning of 2007. It took two years for this function to appear on mobile phones. With what results? Mitigated ones. Here’s our breakdown.


The flagship function of this phone records 1280x720 pixel video at 22 fps. It also plays HD video on a non-HD screen. This means if you want to benefit from HD quality you have to watch the HD films you record on an HD television via the video out on the phone.

The quality is not equal to what you get on video cameras. It’s in 720p format while all video cameras now give 1080i. Encoding speed is fairly low (10 MB ps) and the digital zoom, that jumps and doesn’t focus properly, is not worth its salt. The colours are not perfectly rendered and the lack of stabilization quickly makes itself noticed. Even little video cameras such as the Creative Vado do better.

The i8910 can also play HD video (MPEG-4, DivX, Real One, H.263). We tested a bundle of MPEG-4 films, but they didn’t all work – depending on the codecs used. For example, H.264 files don’t seem to work. You get the sound but not the image.

Video display is quite simply very good, colours perfectly rendered, bright and with good contrast. Watching a cartoon is a nice experience. However, when it comes to audio use the headphones rather than the speakers (that are to be found here and there around the player, I mean phone), which saturate rapidly.



Let’s speak about the camera. Before giving more details to back up our opinion, you should know that this high end 8 Mpixel mobile is a notch below the Nokia N97, that only has a 5 Mpixel sensor and that, in certain circumstances, the camera on the Samsung Toco Ultra Edition, also with an 8 Mpixel sensor, does better.

From the point of view of design and build, note that the zoom button is strangely placed on the bottom edge of the device. Usually it is at the top.

Focus is slow and, what’s more worrying, a bit random. The colours on the images are not always accurate (especially in macro where they're washed out) and the dynamic range is often reduced. This means that light zones lack detail. The colours are nevertheless nicely contrasted and even quite flattering. To sum up then, we’re still light years away from a good 8 Mpixel compact (take a look at the Face-off).

Touchwiz on Symbian

While other phones in the range use the closed Samsung proprietary OS, the i8910 is based on the 5th version of Symbian S60. Already used on the recent N97, this navigation system used by Nokia brings quite a few positives that allow you to develop the phone according to your needs and access multiple synchronisations. This version of Symbian also has an increasing number of applications available for use on a touch interface.

While adopting Symbian here, Samsung has still retained its in-house interface: TouchWiz 3D. Intuitive and nice to look at, the touch interface allows easy navigation through the menus.


The 3 page desktop allows efficient organisation of your mobile world (pro, multimedia, web). A simple sweep across the screen gives access to a page with photos of your favourite contacts.

As usual, several widgets appear in the app bar on the welcome page. Facebook, Youtube, Google Maps and so on. Although this is something, the list needs adding to, as compared with the AppStore or Android Market, it is obviously a bit thin.

Responsiveness is fine without being overly impressive: the screen reacts perfectly to your finger but the system sometimes lacks the rapidity needed for real fluidity at all times. Note that the i8910 can manage several applications simultaneously. The phone switches on relatively quickly: 33 seconds.

The internet experience is very agreable. Display of sites (you need to zoom out to get an overall view of the page as you’d see it on computer) is rapid and navigator options (favourites, having several pages open and so on) are pretty sophisticated and very practical.


Lets finish this test by looking at the audio quality of the i8910. The Player range of phones are all very similar on this point. The interface, still the same, is not the most practical and the audio effects worsen audio quality more than they improve it. Although the in-ear headphones (standard audio out) that come with the phone aren’t bad (this is far from always the case with the competition), they nevertheless struggle to give good sound.