Samsung Omnia W

Available now
26th September 2011

The Samsung Omnia W is a Windows Phone 7.5 device aimed at the midrange smartphone market.

Samsung have extended their new naming convention to the Omnia line, and the "W" indicates that it sits in the middle of the market.. our mnemonic for this being "Samsung Really Wants My Yak" which starts at the high-end "S" series and works its way down.

In hardware terms, the Omnia W is competitive but unremarkable. There's a 3.7" 480 x 800 pixel display, a 1.4 GHz single-core processor, 512MB of RAM plus 8GB of non-expandable flash memory, a 5 megapixel primary camera with 720p HD video recording plus a VGA video calling camera on the front. The Omnia W supports the usual smartphone features such as GPS, WiFi, 3.5G and Bluetooth. There's an FM radio in addition to the Zune media player as well.

Windows Phone looks very different from Android or the iPhone, and although the different interface takes a bit of getting used to, it is a well thought out and very fresh looking operating system.

The Samsung Omnia W supports DLNA, Xbox Live and can backup up to 25GB of data to Windows Live Sky Drive. There's a web browser, email support and perhaps most importantly of all, there is a version of Angry Birds available too.

It's a fairly standard device to look at - a black slabby thing measuring 116 x 59 x 11mm and weighing 115 grams. The internal battery is a 1500 mAh cell which is fairly standard for a smartphone these days.

Samsung say that the Omnia W will start shipping in Italy in late October and will then be rolled out across the rest of the world except for China and North America afterwards. No guidance was give on pricing, but we suspect that this will be competing with the likes of the HTC Radar in the €400 price tag region.