Noelinho.org

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will already know that I have dumped my ever-reliable BlackBerry for a Windows Phone 7 device, the Samsung Omnia 7. I’ve had it for just under a week now, so I thought I should post a little review and compare it to my old phone.

My old trust BlackBerry was wonderful. Many people look at the iPhone and then berate RIM for the  BlackBerry, pointing out that it isn’t swish, isn’t fancy, that nothing stands out about it. Those people forget the point of a BlackBerry for the people who use it. Forget the BlackBerry Curve 8520, which is aimed purely at consumers. The BlackBerry is not primarily for the consumer, however it is marketed. The BlackBerry comes into its own when it comes to business use. It has been second-to-none for email, provides great security, provides great call quality (we often forget about that today, don’t we?) and is built like a brick. BlackBerry phones take quite a pounding before they break…if they break.

That said, there are a few disadvantages… not as many apps, very slow to start up when reboots are required, and the phones themselves aren’t particularly cutting edge on the hardware front. Still, outside of the consumer market, reboot times aside, these aren’t major issues. Fundamentally, the best thing about the BlackBerry is the fantastic push email system, along with push notifications for applications like Twitter and Facebook too. But anyway, when looking out for a new phone, I wanted:

• A phone with a decent camera (or as good as a camera on a phone gets) – sharp pictures, good size, and, if possible, decent video too, for those moments where you just want to capture the moment, but HD video isn’t necessary.
• Sturdy, with a decent screen. After all, you need it to last and if you need to look at the screen a lot, it may as well be a good one!
• A decent keyboard, preferably a physical keyboard, but otherwise, a good virtual keyboard
• Very good email support. This was a must.
• Calendar support. I am lost without my calendar. It is the only way I know where I’m going and when. I can’t store all that information in my head – it’s too much.
• Some app support. Twitter was a must. A Bible app a strong priority. Adobe Reader indispensable (I email myself pdfs to read on the move every day), and some kind of support for notes.
• Oh, and 3G.

My BlackBerry phone did almost all these things. The camera took fairly low-res photos, but took them well, so not a major issue. Twitter was catered for very well. Email, like I said, fantastic. Calendar support there. Physical keyboard. In fact, the only thing missing was, to be honest, 3G, although the phone not supporting BlackBerry OS 6, the web browser was struggling a bit too.

So anyway, I looked for months and found very little, if nothing. I looked at a few Android phones, and they had some very good virtual keyboards, some good apps, reliable, well-reviewed, etc… but they just looked like a Google version of Apple’s iOS, with a better keyboard. And I already own an iPod, so the apps were a red herring really. But to be honest, the reason I couldn’t go with an Android phone was because of the email support. Everyone said it was great for Google Mail, but outside of that, people weren’t so positive about it. I took a cursory look at Symbian…err, amd then punched myself in the face. An iPhone seemed pointless (and to be honest, a little 0ver-rated). I looked at other BlackBerry phones, but none on the market were of much better spec than I already had. And then I saw a friend had bought a Windows Phone 7 device. And I laughed. I pictures Windows Mobile 6.5 – what  a revolting, crap piece of software.

But then I came across the Samsung Omnia 7. It looked the part It had a Super AMOLED screen (which means it displays really vibrant colour. I saw the interface – very minimalist, and therefore very “me” when it comes to phones. I saw that it syncs with Windows Live and Google, a major bonus. It had a really nice camera, does high quality 720p video and most importantly of all, has very good support for email. And so I took the risk.

I have to say, I love it. It’s fantastic. It’s not perfect, but it’s very, very good. The virtual keyboard is fine – apart from when I’m tired – and I have set it up with all four of my email accounts, setting them to fetch every two hours. The Twitter app is good, though not the best. The Facebook app isn’t great, but to be honest, I don’t use Facebook so much these days. My contacts sync with Windows Live. My calendar syncs with Google. I hope they sync with Outlook somehow… and it has Office Mobile. And OneNote. So all my notes can sit on my phone beautifully.

Windows Phone 7 is by no means a mature platform, but it certainly seems to do well for me, and I do place quite heavy requirements on my phone. The only thing I don’t use my phone for very often is phoning people…

Oh, and the web browser works really well, even if it *is* IE… knew there was a catch somewhere.

(I am constantly amazed that some people still read to the bottom of my posts.)

This entry was posted by Noelinho on Monday, February 21st, 2011 at 22:42 and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.