Adding HD to its name is no marketing gimmick. The i8910 Omnia HD from Samsung is more than a mobile. Karan Gour says its one cool entertainer and is sure to captivate you at the show with its HD capabilities

It doesn’t take a brain blessed with an IQ of 180 to figure out the growing dependency of the human race on cellular phones. These little gadgets are gradually getting equipped with technology to handle almost every communicative hurdle we can think of. Take for instance, the coming of the 8 megapixel cameras that give you professional photographic quality and are gaining immense popularity on the back of mobile phones. The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is one such phone.

Out of the box
It truly is a beauty to look at with its expansive widescreen display and speaker-grille dotted side panels. The i8910 HD isn’t a small phone, in fact it’s as long as the iPhone, but thicker and heavier. At the same time, it fits in the pocket with ease (just so long as your jeans aren’t too tight). The i8910 has random buttons placed within the body of the side panels, but there are no protrusions, except for one button, the ‘trigger’ of the camera. The i8910 HD is a touch phone with the buttons popping up on the screen as you move through the easy-to-navigate menus. The three buttons seen at the bottom of the screen (when the screen is in vertical orientation) are shortcuts to the menu, last dialled numbers and controlling the phone when on call (answering, disconnecting).

Features
The Omnia HD comes with a 3.7-inch display, one of the largest in the market today, with a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels. Couple that with the AMOLED technology of the panel and you get a crystal clear picture, just so long as the source files are up to the compression mark of the phone.
At the same time, when we talk HD in home-entertainment, we’re talking Blu-ray 1080p, which of course this phone doesn’t have the capability of reading. A mobile phone’s HD usually means that it can capture HD footage through its camera lens, in this case the 8 megapixel camera fitted with an LED rather than a Xenon flash. The phone does hit HD-Ready resolution of 1280 x 720 at 24fps (Frames Per Second),and can playback video formats like DivX, XviD, H.263, H.264, WMV, MPEG4 and RV, taking care of pretty much all your downloaded movies. It comes equipped with a pair of stereo speakers positioned on both sides of the screen when in horizontal orientation. It also has a Virtual 5.1 channel Dolby surround which only works on Samsung’s hands-free sets that can be hooked up to the 3.5-mm audio jack at the top of the phone.

How it performs
The video quality on this cell phone is flawless, with brilliant black levels and exquisite colour saturation even in the dullest of videos like our DivX version of ‘Dancer In The Dark’. With highly compressed video clips, the screen still did manage to not give way to the pixilation. The sound can get very loud when pushed to the maximum, however, it is extremely treble rich with not a hint of a frequency below 300Hz.
And since this is a larger phone than most, it comes as a surprise that Samsung didn’t fit a little subwoofer diaphragm somewhere in the phone to render some lows at least. They did give it their trademark DNSE 2.0 (Digital Natural Sound Engine). If there are a couple of you huddled on a sofa set, the video screen is sufficiently large to accommodate everyone and the sound is loud enough to get everyone in on the experience.
The camera is truly great, capturing vivid images in-doors and an even better hold on light levels when outdoors. The video quality of it, when shooting in camcorder mode, is also exquisite, not just when watched on the screen but on a regular computer monitor as well.

Our take
The i8910 HD’s screen size and quality are more than you’ll ever need. You can quite easily watch movies on the plane, in your car or at home without too much of the movie’s experience being chopped off due to screen-size. As for the sound, like I said, it’s very powerful in the mid and high ranges and if you want bass, you’ll need to listen to it on earphones. However, on earphones, the virtual surround sound feature doesn’t have much of true ‘surround’; just certain sounds are delayed to emulate the effect. Overall, the i8910 HD is a terrific video companion to have in your pocket.

Price: Rs 33,990

What Is AMOLED

Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode is a combination of OLED, which is an ultra-bright, ultra-thin panel that doesn’t require a back light for illumination, and Active Matrix, which is a pixel configuration that consumes a lot less power than standard OLED screens.

Specifications
Brand: Samsung
Model: I8910 HD
Category: Portable Media Player
Capacity: 8GB, Extendable upto 32GB
Display (Resolution): 3.5”/ 360 x 640 AMOLED
Audio Formats: MP3, WAV
Video Format: DivX, XviD, H.263, H.264, WMV, MPEG4 and RV
Connectivity: Wireless, USB, Bluetooth
Dimensions (H x W x D): 4.9” x 2.4” x 0.5”
Weight: 148gs

Ratings:
Audio: 3/5
Video: 4.5/5
Build: 5/5
Aesthetics: 4/5
Ease of Use: 3.5/5
Value for money: 3/5

AV MAX