The Omnia 7 is Samsung's Super AMOLED entry into the Windows Phone 7 line up

Samsung Omnia 7 Review - Samsung's first handset to run Windows Phone 7 gets put through its paces - The Omnia 7 is Samsung's Super AMOLED entry into the Windows Phone 7 line up. It holds its own against HTC's lovely HD7, and one of the main reasons for this is the handset's screen, with its high contrast ratio and rich colours doing justice to the slick tile-based UI of Windows Phone 7. I found that even in bright sunlight the screen coped extremely well and that it put relatively little strain on the battery.

The majority of other Windows Phone 7 entries don't have anywhere near as good a screen as the Omnia 7, although the HD7 does boast a large display. The touchscreen proves responsive, with few problems faced when zooming and panning on websites. I did find that the operating system itself had the occasional unexplained mishap, but freezes did occur despite multiple screen presses.

Samsung's Omnia 7 mobile phone, the first over their Windows Phone 7 handsets.

Given the relatively strict set of rules phone designers were given by Microsoft for Windows Phone 7, few of the handsets appear drastically different. The Omnia 7 follows a very similar approach to its competitors bar the useful home button found below the screen. Many opted for a touch sensitive icon, but the inclusion of a physical button on the Omnia 7 brings the handset closer in design terms to the iPhone. The phone itself doesn't carry quite the weight of its competitors; it feels light in the hand and not quite as tight a package as other offerings. Samsung did decide to add all sorts of seams and buttons on the handset in unusual places; I don't like them, and I think it makes the phone feel more like the budget Samsung Wave than their high quality Galaxy S.

The phone comes with an HD-capable five-megapixel camera which turns out relatively sharp and saturated images. The handset has a dedicated shutter button situated confusingly below the handset's on/off/hold switch. It makes opening the camera app quick and easy, but also means you often launch by accident when you simply want to lock the phone.

Included with the handset is a tiny wall charger and set of earbud headphones as well as a standard issue USB cable. Audio quality was a bit better than the bundled headphones you find with the iPhone but nothing so significant that they are a major bonus. Getting music on and off the phone was pretty easy; one sync to the Zune software on the PC and then after that everything could be done wirelessly. The Zune marketplace had plenty to choose from and being able to search music at any time using the dedicated search button was a bonus. However initially I found it difficult to figure out how to stream music, frequently being asked if I wanted to purchase a track, rather than take advantage of my Zune Pass.

Samsung has included one piece of software unique to the phone; the "Now" hub. This essentially pulls RSS feeds and information from Reuters, Yahoo! Finance and AccuWeather in to a single screen. Given the relative lack of nice news and weather applications at launch, this is a welcome addition, rapidly becoming my "go to" app when checking the phone in the morning.

At launch Windows Phone 7 itself feels relatively sparse, it certainly looks nice, but after a week or so with the handset I found myself struggling to know what to do with it. Samsung has done a great job of producing a high quality piece of hardware to go with a slick OS, But until applications add increased functionality it is difficult to know whether taking the Windows Phone 7 plunge will be worth it. For those keen to adopt the OS early, the Omnia 7 is not a bad move, but consider the larger screened HTC HD7; it feels more like the handset the OS was designed for. ( telegraph.co.uk )

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