Verizon Wireless to launch Omnia soon

There have been several reports on the blogs that Verizon Wireless might be getting the Samsung Omnia. Those reports have been verified with FCC approvals and rebates. Today there is further confirmation with some ‘in-the-wild’ photos, courtesy of an anonymous tipster to Engadget. According to the tipster, this phone has 5Mpxl camera and will be available in stores with 8 GB package by the end of the year.

Samsung sends lots of holiday cheer to AT&T & Verizon

It appears that Samsung is spreading holiday cheer to AT&T and Verizon and launching a number of phones including maybe the Omnia. In addition to the Omnia, there are atleast three new phones headed for AT&T. The first one is the i907, aka the Mirage which is confirmed to be the BlackJack III. This i907 has a touch sensitive screen with QWERTY keyboard a la the BlackJack II and runs on Windows Mobile 6.0. It runs on a quad-band GSM and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA network and comes with optical mouse, Wi-Fi and 2MPxl camera. A similar package running CDMA/GSM hybrid is headed for Verizon Wireless as SCH-770.

The SGH-A867 is another Omnia look-alike but without Wi-Fi. Details are scarce on it other than it is safe to say that it is not the Omnia as that model is the i900. My guess is that the A867 is a mid-to-lower range smartphone.

Finally, there is the A767 Sangria. It too has limited information available except that it looks like the i620 and is 3G with Bluetooth phone, planned for late October launch.

Also rumored is that the Samsung Omnia may launch with Verizon Wireless in time for the holidays. No model numbers or other details are available.

Samsung unveils new Haptic phone

Samsung today unveiled Haptic 2, its newest touchscreen phone and the supersized brother of Samsung Omnia. The Haptic 2 is an upgrade to the Anycall Haptic and comes with huge 3.2 inches full touchscreen. It retains the DMB television,  integrated mobile banking from the earlier version. It adds 4GB (SCH-W550 or SPH-W5500, about $600) or 16GB (SCH-W555, about $690) of storage, 50 widget applications (up from 15) and user defined vibration tones.

[Via Engadget]

A new Omnia competitor sighted

Apparently, Asus is working on a new Omnia-lookalike called the Galxy7 according to BoyGenius Report. This is a quad-band GSM phone with HSPDA and also works on tri-band CDMA networks. It has a 3.5 inches WVGA 800 x 480 Screen (most likely touchscreen), a 5Mpxl camera, aGPS, Wi-Fi and 4GB of flash memory. It also comes with microSD slot and runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 with Glide 1.5 user interface. At this time, these specifications are unconfirmed. However, they certainly look impressive.  The phone will be available in October

Is CDMA Samsung Omnia in the works?

It appears that Samsung is preparing two derivatives of its popular Samsung Omnia i900 for the North American market. PhoneArena reported today that FCC has just approved the i910 and the i907 from Samsung. The i910 appears to be similar as the i900 with CDMA support alongwith Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This could mean that the phone is headed for Verizon Wireless. The i907 is a slightly different model but it could be a Samsung Omnia derivative headed for AT&T. Neither the operators nor Samsung have confirmed these rumors. You can read the Omnia review here and here. You can read the comparison to HTC Touch Diamond here.

HTC Touch Diamond appearing at a Sprint Store near you

Update: Engadget Mobile is reporting that the Touch Diamond will be released on September 2nd, 2008. However, they think it will be pushed further out to October.

I had reported earlier on the HTC Touch Diamond coming to Sprint in red. It appears that the red-backed HTC Touch Diamond has been confirmed and is indeed heading to Sprint. PhoneArena had earlier reported that it would be released on August 28th. However, the launch has been delayed by a few weeks. The phone will cost $299 with contract and $549 without contract. You can read the reviews here and comparison to Samsung Omnia here

Initial pictures of Samsung i7110

KingMobile and Mobile Help Desk are showing first pictures of the Samsung i7110. This phone is unlike any other in the “i” series from Samsung which is targeted to business users and the leading examples of this series are the i8150 innov8 and i900 Omnia. The i7110 is a multimedia phone with 5Mpxl camera with flash, music player and FM radio. It is unclear whether it will have GPS. Also not announced are the pricing or release dates, though it looks like the launch might be near.

Another Samsung Omnia review

Here is another detailed review of the Samsung Omnia i900 by PocketNow.

Samsung Omnia Vs HTC Touch Diamond

Here is a good in-depth comparision of Samsung Omnia and HTC Touch Diamond from an Italian site CellularMagazine.it.

Samsung SGH-i900 Omnia review

Samsung i900 Omnia

Samsung SGH-i900 Omnia was recently reviewed by the::Unwired. It is a cool phone based on Window Mobile 6.1 Professional with haptic touch. Samsung has done a fantastic job of making an operating system that is designed to work with a stylus to respond to touch. The screen is 3.2″ in size and supports 240 x 400 pixel (WQVGA). It comes with 3 customized Today screens and an accelerometer.

According to the::Unwired, the Omnia

features quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE but only singelband UMTS  at 2100 MHz and HSDPA (up to 7.2 Mbps) while HSUPA isn’t supported. Furthermore, the SGH-i900 features Bluetooth 2.0+EDR including support of A2DP as well as WiFi b/g, inbuilt GPSand FM radio with RDS support.

The phone has 5 Mpxl camera, and meagre 128MB RAM. However, Omnia comes in two models with 8GB or 16GB interal flash storage and both models support microSD cards with upto 16GB memory. The Omnia comes with all the standard Windows software. In addition, Samsung has included Opera Mobile 9.5, ShoZu, a RSS reader and Podcast fetcher as well as a business card scanner software, a FM radio interface and more.
The Omnia comes with a good music player and video support including Divx support. You can watch Divx movies on TV through the onboard TV connectivity.

The rumor is that AT&T will launch this device in North America in Q3 2008. However, it will first launch in Germany in August on 4 operators – Vodafone, T-Mobile, O2 and E-Plus