Samsung Omnia II

PC World - On the surface, the Samsung Omnia II ($200 with a two-year contract from Verizon; price as of 12/1/09) seems to be the Windows Mobile phone that fans have been waiting for. With its gorgeous 3.7-inch AMOLED touch display, attractive design, and impressive specs, this phone is a real head-turner. Unfortunately, the Omnia II's performance disappoints. The TouchWiz 2.0 user interface seems to bog down the phone's speed; in one instance, our review unit crashed and had to be restarted.

On looks alone, the Omnia II is quite alluring and fits in nicely with Verizon's line of premium smartphones like the Motorola Droid, the HTC Droid Eris, and the BlackBerry Storm II. Measuring 4.7 by 2.4 by 0.5 inches thick and weighing 4.8 ounces, the Omnia II is just slightly larger and heavier than the original (which was 4.4 by 2.2 by 0.5 inches and weighed 4.3 ounces). Still, the phone remains quite slim. With its rounded corners, brushed metal details, and smooth red-and-black back cover it is much more aesthetically pleasing than its predecessor.

The 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED display dominates its face with a piano-black border surrounding it. Hardware keys on the face are minimal: Talk and End/Power keys flank a large Main Menu key that looks deceptively like an optical mouse (which the first Omnia had). The left spine houses the 3.5mm headphone jack (a welcome upgrade--the original lacked one), an easy-to-press volume rocker, a microSD card slot, and the OK key (pressing it once closes an app; holding it down returns you to the home screen). On the right spine is the stylus (at the top), a USB port, a lock key (for locking the screen), and the camera/camcorder key.

The Omnia II has 8GB of built-in internal memory and 16GB of expandable memory with a microSD card (sold separately).

Call quality was consistently good over Verizon's 3G network, though I did notice a faint hiss on one call. The vast majority of my calls sounded loud and clear with very little background noise or distortion.

The Omnia II has no physical QWERTY keyboard, so you'll have to rely on its touchscreen keyboard. This keyboard is a bit cramped in portrait mode, but gives you plenty of room to type in landscape mode. Unfortunately, I encountered a few issues when using it. First, the spacebar is small, and oddly placed on the right side rather than at the bottom center, where you'd expect it. Second, the delay between what I typed and what appeared on screen was distracting. Finally, haptic touch (light, vibrating feedback when you press a touch key) is disabled for some reason in keyboard mode.