Announced in Singapore this week, Singapore will be the first country to have the Samsung Omnia SGH-i900 available in the mobile store. According to Samsung, the new full touch screen Omnia phone will be available in Singapore this week, follow by Europe in end July and then China, Taiwan in August. If you are buying it without a mobile service contract, it is available at around $1098 SGD (804 USD) for the 16GB version.

The Samsung Omnia, meaning ‘everything’ in Latin and ‘wish’ in Arabic, goes beyond the current top-of-the line features available in today’s mobile phones. Pre-installed with Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface, a list of little widgets are ready for you to customise and personalise the home screen. With the 3.2-inch WQVGA display screen, you can tap, sweep, drag and drop the widgets easily. The whole operation on the home screen is smooth with minimum lag, it takes about 1MB of the memory to keep it running.

With a built in sensor, the Omnia will switch to landscape mode automatically when you turn your phone. The landscape mode can be used for both side, you can rotate your phone to the left or to the right. The only situation it won’t re-act to you is when you turn the Omnia upside down, I guess nobody will do this then.

The Samsung Omnia is ultra slim with a size of only 112 x 56.9 x 12.5 mm. The 127 grams body has packed with the support of HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, EDGE, GSM Quadband, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth and FM Radio. You also get a built in 16GB/8GB flash memory. It will take you a while to fill it up even with a 5 megapixel camera on board. The Omnia accepts up to 16GB of microSDHC memory card, which boost up the total file storage space to 32GB maximum.

Like other full touch screen phone, the Samsung Omnia has a soft QWERTY keyboard for SMS/Email text input. Depends on your thumb size, the soft keyboard’s keys are actually quite small to me in portrait mode. It is much better when I do the texting in landscape mode. If you always love to do things with single hand, you might take a few more tries to get use to the QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode.

Alternatively you can also use the stylus, which comes together with the package and can be kept togethe with the phone case.

The Samsung Omnia will be commercially launched in Singapore in 8 GB and 16 GB versions. The 16 GB version will be launched first at a retail price of  $1098 SGD (804 USD) without a contract. The Omnia will be sold together with Agis NavFone software in Singapore with maps of Singapore, Johor Bahru, Malacca, Klang Valley and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). Availability and pricing for the 8GB version will be announced at a later date.

Samsung Omnia (i900) Specifications

• HSDPA (up to 7.2Mbps) / 3G (2100MHz) / EDGE/ GPRS Class 12 / GSM (900/1800/1900MHz)
• 5 Megapixel Camera with Auto-Focus & Power LED flash. Also comes with face and smile detection, Wide Dynamic Range optimisation and geo-tagging
• 2nd VGA Camera for video telephony
• 65K TFT WQVGA (240×400); 16:9 format
• Multi-Format Music Support (MP3,AAC,AAC+,RM,WMA)
• Background Music Play
• FM Radio
• Light Sensor / Motion Sensor with automatic screen rotation and etiquette pause
• Digital Photo Frame
• Video Recording (MPEG4, up to 640 x 480 / 3gp)
• Video Playback (DivX, Xvid, MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV)
• Video Editor / TV Out function
• Bluetooth v2.0 EDR / USB 2.0 / WiFi 802.11 b/g
• Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
• E-mail ( POP3, IMAP4, SMTP, MS PUSH Mail)
• Windows Live with Windows Mobile Messenger
• Offline Mode / Hands-free Speaker
• Internet Explorer 5 (WEB) / Opera Browser (WAP)
• Full Touch Screen
• Optical Joystick
• RSS Reader / Podcast Manager
• Office Mobile / Internet Sharing
• Java MIDP 2.0
• Marvell PXA312, 624 MHz CPU
• RAM 128MB, ROM 256MB
• Support up to 1000 USIM contacts
• Storage Memory 16GB or 8GB built-in Flash memory; MicroSD expansion slot tested up to 8GB
• Size: 112 x 56.9 x 12.5mm / 122g
• Phone battery capacity: 1440mAh
• Talk Time: 5.8 hours (2G), 4 hours (3G)
• Standby Time: 500 hours (2G), 400 hours (3G)

More Photos at next page.