Shortly after the start of the new year, I upgraded to the Samsung Omnia phone on Verizon Wireless. I'm a gadget freak who does a ton of mobile computing, so my phone is like an extra appendage, and I use it heavily for web-based browsing, text & e-mail, and the occasional voice call, too. 

 

Given all my use-case scenarios, I seriously considered switching to the iPhone, but decided that I need to stay on the Verizon Wireless + Windows Mobile platform for a number of reasons (I made that decision before the Kindle iPhone ap--if Kindle for iPhone holds up, it may turn out to be a tipping point towards iPhone, and towards online reading in general).

 

A colleague of mine recently got an Omnia, too, and asked if I had any tips to share for getting the most out of this Windows Mobile 6.1 device, which comes packed with other goodies too, like Microsoft Office Mobile, TouchWiz UI, an optical mouse, and a 5-megapixel camera.

 

Here are the tips I gave her, based on how I've been using the phone for just over 2 months:

 

 

 

1.       Browsers – know when to use what. The Omnia comes with both IE & Opera. Opera is remarkably good for browsing, resizing, pagination, and forms. It also has tabs!  I use Opera for most of my web browsing (particularly leaving open tabs for sites I hit on a daily basis, like BoingBoing, Wikipedia, and the Mobile Bible Gateway). But I also find that Facebook and most Microsoft properties behave better in IE. For best productivity, I keep both browsers running (since multi-threaded support is one of the biggest advantages over iPhone) and hop back and forth between the two to deal with slow load times on fat pages. Neither browser handles scripting well.

 

2.       Turn the phone face-down to temporarily mute. This is a nice touch for when I’m in meetings or at my desk. Of course, it can also back-fire—I’ve missed calls at home by not noticing that I’d accidentally tossed my phone face-down while waiting for a call or text to come in.  

 

3.       Add clock to the title bar & home screen. Double click the clock setting, then click Menu, then click Options, and select “On” for “Display the clock on the title bar in all programs." You can also choose to toggle the display between analog & digital, but with as few pixels as the clock face gets in that menu bar, the analog view is barely readable.

 

4.       The clock has lots of  alarm options, which can be customized by day of the week, time, and ringtone. Because my phone docks near my bed, it’s supplanted my alarm clock since it lets me easily set different times & sounds for different days of the week.

 

5.       The camera is screamin’ – better quality than my previous digital camera. A far cry from most camera phone "pictures" which really do no more than capturing a few blurry, fuzzy pixels, this camera packs a 5 megapixel whallop. Also unlike my previous picture phones, memory management for photos is really good on this device, where images write directly to the memory card automatically. With easy file transfer to the desktop via card reader or cable, I can take and send some pretty impressive pictures from this phone. I also like the "smile detection" feature, which helps me catch my friends looking their best.

 

6.       Radio! Taking the radio tuner cable has been nice for trips to the gym and walks when I don’t want to lug two separate devices for music and phone.

 

7.       Resistive NOT capacitive touch – unlike iPhone’s capacitive touch screen, which requires you to touch the screen with the skin of your finger, the Omnia uses resistive touch. That means that I can still use the phone and browse while wearing gloves in cold weather. I’ve also found that the MS mechanical pencils also make really good styluses in a pinch.

 

What I don’t like:

1.       Keyboard – I was pretty fast & accurate on the mini-qwerty physical keyboard on my Moto Q; the all-touch keyboard on the Omnia makes accuracy much harder. Worse, “Send” on text & e-mail is dangerously close to the bottom row of keys. I’ve accidentally hit send on so many partial texts, my sister now says I text like an old person.

• I have heard there are better touch keyboards out there, but I haven’t gotten around to testing & installing

2.       Outlook mobile alerts – are just annoying, especially on days when I’m quadruple booked. In my dream world, my phone will know the difference between meetings I'm already attending, and will quit popping up reminders that I have to dismiss even after I've arrived.

 

3.       Small surface area on links and menu items. Again, accuracy is limited by the UI, and dexterity of the user. Not an ideal interface.

 

4.       No scrolling – scrolling and pagination is elegant in Mobile Opera, but not in  IE, mail, or text. To help address, I re-mapped short clicks on the camera button to page down. It’s still not ideal, since IE treats page down as jumping to the next link, like tabbing.

 

5.       AVOID THE VZW AP STORE – never, never click on the Verizon Ap store. Not only is it lame, it takes forever to load and also seems to have a memory leak. Lack of aps is clearly the biggest competitive disadvantage when compared with iPhone.

 

I also haven't been able to figure out how to customize the shortcuts on the TouchWiz menu bar, which renders the menu mostly useless.

 

One other low-fi "customization" I've applied to my Omnia: I ordered a soft silicone case (pink, of course!) to protect the hardware and give it some extra personality. As with the silicone case I used on my MotoQ before this phone, the silicone cover is the perfect size for keeping a credit card, id, and a bill or two in cash stored directly behind the phone. With my important plastic stored in my phone's case, I can travel light and leave my wallet behind.