Archive for August, 2009
Omnia Pro B7610 Next Week?
Posted by chippy in Availability, price on August 30th, 2009
Once again, and in some way connected to the huge price of the Nokia N900, I’ve had a a scan around for latest information on the Omnia Pro B7610. It’s looking like my neighbors in Holland are going to get the first pop and all indicators are pointing to next week for the first shipments. I’ve seen the 2nd and the 4th quoted as dates. PDASHop.nl have the device listed for a 4th Sept shipment.
As for Germany, PDAMax has switched to a 7-14days tag on their products page and the Geizhals.at German search page is starting to update more regularly as resellers fine tune their prices.
With prices down to just over 400 Euro now (from an original 460 Euro price-point) it’s undercutting the N900 by nearly 200 Euros and the HTC Pro2 by 100 Euros. There’s no arguing that the Omnia B7610 Pro is still one of the best value high-end smartphone choices.
N900 Launched. Omnia Pro order Cancelled.
Posted by chippy in Competitors on August 27th, 2009
Nokia have sent out a press release launching the N900 and Maemo 5
It’s going to be available in October for 500 Euro which means my Omnia Pro order has (within the last few minutes) been cancelled. I don’t see any reason to wait for the Omnia Pro when the Nokia will have…
- A better camera
- A much more powerful processor
- An exciting user and developer community
- A much better browser (Mozilla based)
- HSPA data capability
I’ve updated the N900 product page over at UMPCPortal to reflect the new information. Have added some videos too. The next step is to try and get to Nokia World in Stuttgart next week.
How do feel about the Omnia Pro now? I wonder how Samsung feels about the Omnia Pro now.
N900 and Sholes. 2 more to watch.
Posted by chippy in Competitors on August 25th, 2009
With the discovery of a press photo of the Nokia N900, complete with its name for the first time, it’s safe to assume that this OMAP 3 / Maemo powered device is ready to be launched. Probably next week.
Maemo is a Linux based OS build from the ground up for internet-based activities. It won’t be as mature as WM, the iPhone OS or even Android but it’s getting good support and is a based on a very open architecture. It even runs a Mozilla based browser that should sync with your desktop to bring over history, passwords and tabs! For the web-focused individual, this is probably going to be the phone to beat because of that, and the next-gen CPU under the hood. Cortex A8 architectures are said to be 2-3 times as fast as ARM11 architectures. The iPhone 3GS is proof of that and we should expect to see more Cortex-based phones soon. Snapgragon, Tegra (2010 version) Samsung and Freescale all have high-end CPU offerings in their parts bin now.
But if Maemo doesn’t take your fancy, how about Android on a similar architecture. The Motorola Sholes (yes, I said Motorola) is sizing up well if the rumors are to be believed and the latest highlights an October launch. With a WVGA screen and slider keyboard, it’s going to sit right alongside the Omnia Pro B7610, HTC Pro2, M900 and N97 in your toplist.
I haven’t got full details on the Sholes yet but the latest on the N900 is here in the UMPCPortal database.
Launching the Omnia Pro Forums
As we move forward towards the release of the Omnia Pro it's imprtant to be able to ask questions and post tips and information that can help others. I've set up the forum to enable just that. Feel free to register and be among the first Omnia Pro fans!
Format and forums can be changed in this early stage so if you have any feedback, please post it in this thread.
Thanks for visiting.
Join the forum discussion on this post - (7) Posts While We’re Waiting. Omnia Pro Overview Video
This video is in Vietnamese but the quality is good and you get to see the device with the back off, starting up and some details from the UI. Enjoy.
Hints about the Omnia Pro Web Performance.
I’ve been reconsidering the Omnia Pro again today. An encounter with an HTC Hero and a Toshiba TG01 got me thinking about large-screen ‘buddy’ devices and how they could be a problem. The Omnia is definitely on the large side but to be fair, it’s not as huge as the 4.1″ screened device I was thinking about when I wrote that article. The Hero, on the other hand, was lovely and slim and I was impressed with the on-screen keyboard. Do I really need a huge converged MID-Phone when I can get a slick, lower-end ‘buddy’ phone with a vibrant OS and application ecosystem as my 24/7 device and supplement it with a more powerful, web-focused MID?
One of the main reasons I’ve ordered the Omnia Pro is the keyboard. I plan to be twittering, tagging a microblogging like a mad thing. I’ll be using a lot of social networking software (Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and others) and as with all social networking software, i’ll be needing a good browser to view the URLs that come across these networks. 50% of the ‘tweets’ I receive have URLs in them and if the browser is no good then the social networking experience suffers big-time.
So far there have been few real browser speed and accuracy tests but there’s one device out there that matches the Omnia Pro almost exactly. The Samsung Mondi SWD-M100 MID. It has the same screen resolution with the same browser on the same operating system with the same CPU – an 800Mhz ARM11 device. Fortunately the Mondi has been reviewed by a few publications already so I’ve scoured them to see if I can find some hints about browser performance.
We tested the Mondi using CNET’s Wi-Fi network. Most Web pages loaded in about 10 seconds, which is more than acceptable. We tried sites like Yahoo, The New York Times, CNET, and United Airlines, and waited about the same length of time for each page. Sites that are busy with heavy graphics like Wow.com took about twice as long to load, but we were quite satisfied with our browsing experience.
10 seconds for most pages is good although there’s no indication of whether these sites were mobile versions or not.
Web browsing on the Mondi works much better than on most Windows Mobile phones, thanks to the built-in Opera Mobile 9.5 browser and Flash Lite 3, which supports Flash 8 content such as YouTube videos. (It doesn’t support Hulu, which requires Flash 9.) Flash videos played jerkily, but clearly.
Pocketables says…
Nothing yet. Jenn ove at Pocketables usually does an excelent job reviewing browser usability and speed so this is one to look forward to. Will Opera 9.5 provide a speedy, complete experience or is that 800Mhz CPU there for no good reason at all?
I’ll be looking very closely at what Jenn has to say about web performance on the Mondi. If it’s looking good then I’ll keep the Omnia in my Amazon shopping cart. If not, I may be taking my money elsewhere.
Cyberport reports 20th August for Samsung Omnia Pro B7610 in Germany
Posted by chippy in Availability on August 13th, 2009
Giving me some hope that there’s movement on the Omnia Pro front is this date that popped up at Cyberport. There’s every chance that this is just a guess by Cyberport though as I don’t see any dates elsewhere in Germany.
Update: Cyberport have removed the date and replaced it with ‘unknown’ So much for that lead!
Amazon are usually fairly quick to get information but there’s nothing on their site.
Have you spotted any new dates in your country?
In related news, I wrote about the HTC Leo on UMPCPortal yesterday. No keyboard but an interesting MID-like specification.
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Samsung Omnia Pro Information
I track the Samsung Omnia Pro (and similar devices) over at the UMPCPortal product database. Click through to get the full specifications along with videos, images and links to other Omnia-Pro content on the net.
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