Camera

The Omnia 7 comes with a 5 mega-pixel camera which I haven’t really tested extensively – in specific the video feature. I would not go into details on the camera settings except to say I have taken some shots in the evening (both indoors and outdoors) with the flash off.

While the photos did not come out stunning, they are at least acceptable though I have yet to see how the photos taken in bright daylight would turn out. These photos have been uploaded to Windows Live and those interested can double click on the icon on the right to check them out. (I’m too lazy to figure out how to embed it as as slide show.)

This is where I discovered yet another thing I didn’t like about this phone – no SD card support. When the iCrap comes with at least 16GB, why there isn’t SD card support when this phone is just 8GB is baffling. Perhaps this was done to keep users with the Windows Phone platform, as it would be quite difficult to take the data elsewhere when users change their phone. (One of the reasons why I considered Apple’s business practices unethical.)

Music / Video Player

As it is basically a Zune Player, media is managed through the Zune program (which I downloaded from the Internet). I will not go into too much details on the Zune software but I suppose it works the same way iTunes work for the iCrap.

Once I got some music onto the device, I am a little surprised that the sound quality turned out as good as (if not better than) my Sony Ericsson W902 – a walkman phone. I won’t actually say it is better because the headphones are new. Anyway, the headphone jack works with standard headphones so there will be no concern with replacements or getting better ones.

As to video, I loaded some wmv files on my computer onto the player and I also installed Youtube App to view some videos. There is no doubt that the screen is superb even when it’s just a 4″. AMOLED rulez!

Wifi

Once turned on, the wifi will try to detect all the networks available. Connecting to wifi is relatively easy, as long as the wifi router broadcasts its SSID. In the case of my home network, I had to re-enable my router to broadcast its SSID before I can connect.

Unlike the Blackberry, there is no option to save a connection profile. That simply means if I had disable SSID broadcast on my wifi router, I need to re-enable it every time I use the Omnia 7 with it. This is a serious pain in the butt because even the ancient Blackberry 8320 ‘Curve’ I use automatically re-connects whenever it is in range even though SSID broadcast is off.

Browser

Now that I am done playing with the features that are mostly not web related, I’ll bypass the xBox and Office features and move on to the main avenue of accessing the Internet – the browser.

There wasn’t another browser app I can find in ‘Marketplace’, so I am stuck with the Internet Explorer that comes with the set. Those familiar with Opera Mini will find some similarities here. It is capable of tab browsing but multiple pages are organised into individual buttons for easy switching. There is no flash support and I guess everyone know that already. It does load up a webpage more or less like what I see on the PC so I have no complaints.

Loading speed actually depends on what kind of connection is used. It can sometimes get annoying slow or laggy when the 3G /GPRS signal is weak. When I connected to wifi either at work or at home, I have nothing much to complain about the speed. I even tried swiping it up and up repeatedly to see whether there are ‘artifacts’ and it scrolls pretty well even in the midst of loading a page. Since I have no iCrap or Android to make a comparison, I would just say the speed of the browser is acceptable. It sure beats the browser I had on the Blackberry ‘Storm’ even though they are built on different technologies.

Incidentally, while I was looking for a video comparing browser speed between Android, Blackberry OS6, iCrap and Windows Phone 7, I end up with this – which suggests that not all handsets running on Windows Phone 7 are equal, even when there is no significant specification differences between them.

Marketplace

Lastly, the App Store called Marketplace. There are quite a number of categories, but if anyone expecting a lot of apps will be disappointed. There is probably just about 1000 apps and even though I was told the Amazon Kindle App is available for this platform I wasn’t able to find it using the search feature. Its only bright spot maybe the availability of some Xbox titles, though that really makes no difference to me because I am not into gaming – much less on a small device like this.

Downloading and installing the free apps is quite straight forward. I had done both installation on 3G / GPRS and wifi without any difficulties. If there was I would be really upset. So far I have downloaded Adobe Acrobat Reader, Twitter, WLM and Facebook along with a the local Bus Guide App which I haven’t really tested whether the arrival times displayed are accurate.

Conclusion

There are no surprises with this phone, such as in griping the phone is a certain manner causing a drop in signal strength. In fact, where the reception is known to be bad at my cubicle, I picked up a call today and I was able to have a proper conversation with the caller for the entire duration without having to call him back on the land line. In fact, even battery life is as expected – in my case it drained out after about 8 hours of constant usage. If it is used only on a need to use basis then it can go without charging for almost one day before draining out.

Since I am not into apps, it meets most of my expectations (except the lack of Chinese input) in terms on connectivity and basic functions. Then again, I would probably also feel happy and comfortable even if I had purchased an Android based phone or a Blackberry ‘Torch’ instead.

However, going forward the number of apps must increase. Not because I need or want them, but for the phone to find a foothold in the market and attract existing users of the Blackberry, iCrap and Android. Otherwise it will simply joint the ranks of minor players like Nokia’s Symbian Phones, or even worse those running on WebOS from Palm (now acquired by HP).

Before I end, I reiterate that Microsoft must give priority in putting the Cut & Paste feature and Chinese Input capabilities into the phone. These are features that are available in most phones. Further to that, please allow us to do something about the font size of the headers. for e.g. I certainly don’t need the ‘edit’ option to be much bigger that the name of the contact. That’s not mentioning that when I started using the phone, the font size caused me to wonder why I had to ‘edit my email account’ just to edit a contact. It took me several seconds to figure out that it actually meant editing the information of the contact stored in that email account because the word ‘contact’ was off screen as result of the large fonts.

I apologise for not providing any screenshots, because I have yet to find a method which allows me take a screen shot directly off the phone like the Blackberry, or even the iCrap. However, for those who are interested, please refer to this link. These screenshot are taken from a release candidate version of the Windows Phone 7 ROM. Though not exactly the same as production, they are quite close to the actual ones.

Recommended Read:
ZDNet: Windows Phone 7 apps hands-on (photos)