Windows Phone Thoughts: pocketnow.com Video Overview of the Samsung Omnia i900

The Samsung Omnia is an impressive device, and this video shows that quite nicely - the screen animations are fluid, and the speed in moving from screen to screen looks snappy. I'm a bit less convinced that the constrained desktop space of a phone is the right place for widgets, although it could be because most of those widgets seemed somewhat "oversized" and not really designed with space-saving in mind. Still, it's a neat way to customize the device. The screen rotation animation is absolutely fantastic - it starts almost instantly, and gives the user something to watch while the device is rotating the screen in the background. It probably takes just as long to rotate as any other Windows Mobile device, but the perception is that it's always "doing something" - and that's really important. This is the first screen rotation solution I've seen that's nearly as good as the iPhone - I'd say this is about 90% there. Nicely done Samsung! I also like the work they've done in creating the custom icons - they put a lot of effort into the fit and finish on this device.

[click through to YouTube to watch it in higher quality]

My favourite part of the video is when Brandon is demonstrating the QWERTY keyboard and while trying to type "The quick brown fox" he gets "Tje quock btown focus" and he says "Ahh, it almost got it - close enough" then there's a cut in the video - maybe he burst out laughing like I did when he saw that it really wasn't close at all. ;-) I've had similar success with on-screen touch keyboards, though I found that I did get better with the keyboard on the HTC Touch Diamond after a few weeks. It still can't beat a hardware keyboard though!