Okay, today's Today has published a review of the Samsung Omnia. Its a rather bias and unjustified review, here's the pdf download from their website (http://www.box.net/shared/0rhgw834s4)

Quoted from Today (11 July 2008):

Motion-sensing accelerometers change the screen orientation between the portrait and landscape modes when the phone is rotated. Note: The accelerometers are very sensitive — the slightest movement will rotate the display orientation. It’s annoying and eats up unnecessary power, especially when each change is accompanied by a slight vibration. We recommend that you set the sensitivity level to the lowest (it helps a little) or practise the art of holding the Omnia rigidly.
The most inaccurate part of the review is of the accelerometer. First, setting the sensitivity level to the lowest does help alot. You will need to hold the phone in horizontal or vertical position before the screen will rotate. If she still finds that too sensitive, i'm not sure at what angle then should the phone orientate the screen.

Second point, the vibration could be off! The editor must have missed the option, the checkbox is just right under where the sensitivity level is.

Here's a video of the accelerometer in action with the highest and lowest setting.



As for battery life, i managed to get 3-4 days out of one full charge, do find it much better than the other phones.

On and off, the editor has been comparing the phone with iphone. The best part being the subtitle,

This 16GB touchscreen phone is a beauty, but alas, it’s still no iPhone
Alas, this is not an iPhone from the start. To give the editor benefit of doubt, maybe she has gotten a faulty set or she is pressing for time.


Anyway, the article has sparked some minor commotion in some of the forums also. Following is one of the forumer's reply to the editor

Dear Ariel,
Regarding the mentioned article, I would like to point out a couple of things.

Giving a product review is supposed to be unbiased and neutral. From your title as a online and technology editor, I would imagine that you should have knowledge that being a journalist, you should not put your personal likings in the article itself and affect the reader. Readers read reviews to find out how good or bad a product is, and sometimes use it to determine whether or not they should purchase the product. I find your review is totally useless in this aspect.

Right at the start of the article, I already came across the line "This 16GB touchscreen phone is a beauty, but alas, it’s still no iPhone", giving me the impression that you might already prefer the iphone over the reviewed product.

Secondly, if you wish to compare products, please do so in a correct manner. Compare a Windows Mobile phone with a Windows Mobile phone, not a phone running Mac OS. Even if you want to compare different OS, how come you are not comparing phones running Symbian or Linux, or even the up and coming Android?

Thirdly, I am suspecting whether you have used the phone long enough to publish a review on it? There are certain pieces of information from the article that seems to suggest that you have not really used the phone for long. Information like the motion sensing accelerometer sensitivity, and the battery life is so inaccurate, that it leads me to believe that either you did not properly try out the phone for a few days to know the functionalities and features, or simply you have no idea how to operate a
Windows Mobile based phone.

As you may suspect, I am a current user of the SGH i900 Omnia, but I am definitely not biased towards it. It has its faults and flaws, but I certainly don't think that it is as worthless as you make it out to be. In short, I feel that this article to be extremely biased and should not have been published. I am very disappointed by the level of journalism project by the Today paper, as the article sounds like a well written piece from Apple fanboy bashing up a rival product.

Please review this article again and let me know if I have wrongly interpreted your intentions.

Best regards,XXX