Nearly a week after Samsung released the Russian XEII1 firmware update, the company has released a new XXII1 update for Italian handsets. The similarities between both code names is not a coincidence – from what I can tell this new update (dated 7th September) is near enough identical to the Russian firmware.

I upgraded to this new firmware from IG2 yesterday and am enjoying it so far. You end up with a new 3D Task Switcher (a carousel showing opening apps) – it’s certainly not needed, but it sure looks fancy. There is also a Grid View of open apps if you prefer it to remain simple.

Other changes include a new zoom icon for the browser. You can also now zoom in/out of pictures in MediaBrowser. It’s good to know that the frustrating stop bug in the browser has also been fixed. The dial pad also sports ‘abc’, ‘def’ lettering on numbers now too.

From what I can tell, the update has made no change to the frame rate of HD video recording (you still get AAC audio though). There is also no App Store icon, despite the store launching shortly (Monday 14th September). A quick video tour of the new firmware is attached after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

We already knew that a Samsung Application store would launch in September, now we know the exact date. According to a press release it will launch on September 14th. The storefront will first cater for users of the Omnia and i8910 HD handsets (thankfully!)

Initially the app store will hit the UK, France and Italy with a further 30 countries expected to be supported in due course. Downloads will be available over-the-air via credit card or phone bill payments.

You can find the store over at SamsungApps.com, which at the moment has a “Samsung Application Store is coming up! Please visit us again” sign. Three hundred apps are expected on launch day with a further 2,000 by the year-end, certainly sounds impressive. Gameloft, Electronic Arts, Handmark, TAITO, Paragon SW, Capcom, Com2us, Prompt, Pearson Longman, Bokan Tech and Diotek are among the providers of applications to the Samsung Application Store.

Steve Litchfield of All About Symbian has listed his top twenty freeware applications for the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD smartphone handset. It’s quite a broad list of freeware apps and well worth checking out.

We haven’t tried all of them so far, the main apps we have used regularly are Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, Fring and TweetS60. However, we quickly replaced TweetS60 with the paid-for app Gravity, which is a superb twitter application. So, which free apps are you using on your i8910 HD?

Fring has released version 3.40 of its application, which now includes support for Samsung Symbian handsets. The changelog for this version includes unification hints, user profiles and big fixes. You can download fring for your i8910 here.

fring is a peer-to-peer Mobile VoIP based telephony network. It enables users to talk and chat using Skype, ICQ, Google Talk, MSN Messenger / Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Yahoo Messenger and SIP providers.

Digia recently launched its @Web browser for S60 5th Edition mobile handsets. This (obviously) includes the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD along with other devices such as the Nokia 5800 and Nokia N97.

The i8910 HD is a wonderful handset but the browsing experience is one area that hasn’t been up to par in my opinion. The standard browser feels sluggish with pages taking a long time to render. Also, my normal mobile browser of choice, Opera, crashes often due to Java issues.

Digia’s @Web browser is said to be “fully finger touch controllable”, including full finger touch UI. It also includes direct page control with finger, multiple browser windows, url auto-complete and automatic full screen browsing.

It’s worth noting though that it uses the WebKit engine built into the S60 handset. What this means is that it uses the same rendering engine as the standard browser but simply adds an UI layer on top. Therefore, you still won’t get kinetic scrolling on your i8910. The S60 5th Edition version is currently in beta. For those wanting to give it a try, it is available to download here.

I haven’t tested it myself yet, but have heard that it can be buggy. Also, as it relies on the standard browser, some reports say that is slower. Have you tried it? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

For anyone that has looked to generate a certificate key for their Samsung i8910 Omnia HD, the main method up until now has been to submit a request to the Chinese OPDA website. This can be quite problematic to navigate, especially for most westerners.

We therefore thought we’d highlight a new website recently launched called S60Certkey that promises to do the same but in a much more user friendly way and in English! You can check out the site here. It’s already seen quite significant growth since its 1st August launch with 2,850 members and counting.

Samsung is looking to address the low number of applications for its handsets by launching its Application Store in September. The Samsung App Store is already being trialled in UK & Germany but is expected to launch across Europe next month. Hopefully, this means that searching for Samsung i8910 Omnia HD apps will become easier than current methods.

To gear up for this launch, it recently launched the Application Seller Site portal. This is a channel to encourage developers to offer both Symbian and Windows-based apps for Samsung handsets. Developers can sign up for membership of the new site for $1. As they register relevant apps or content, including suggested price and target markets, their software is filtered through a back end system and then promoted for download via the app store site.

Nokia Messaging is a service that allows users to set up, access and use their email including a push service. Despite operating on a number of S60 devices, Nokia only supports its own handsets for this service. However, HDBlog.it is reporting that it has managed to get Nokia Messaging v10.00.14 working on a Samsung i8910 Omnia HD handset (which of course runs on Symbian S60 5th Edition).

There is a slight caveat though, you need to install the HelloOX v1.03 hack to get Nokia Messaging to work. Then you need to sign up to the Nokia Messaging service online to create an account. The program link to download will then be sent via SMS to the handset. Once you’ve installed the program and entered the password and followed the setup instructions, you will have access to your mail including push functionality.

Judging by the pictures on the HDBlog.it site, it appeared to work flawlessly once working. Now all we need is a widget that shows emails on the homescreen as seen in the Nokia N97. Hopefully, that can’t be too far away either. Has anyone managed to get this working yet? We’d love to hear your experiences in the comments below.

Samsung is encouraging developers to create widgets for the i8910 Omnia HD smartphone through the Samsung Innovation Quest 2009. It involves developing a home screen widget for the i8910 HD and the great thing is that the IP remains with the dev, rather than Samsung. There will be a cash prize for the winner along with promotion of the chosen widget. Apparently, there are no barriers about what your widget can be about.

It’s good news that Samsung continues to support the phone, especially with a new roster of Omnia handsets recently released. The competition launches next Wednesday 24 June 2009 (a day before we hopefully see the sim-free release in the UK). For more details, including how to enter, click here. The competition is open to anyone.

The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is one of the highest performance phones on the market, sporting a 600 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU and 256MB of RAM. That power under the hood is needed to handle HD video, but it also puts it in good stead when it comes to day-to-day tasks. It means that browsing the UI is a snappy experience and hopefully should mean fewer crashes.

This is a theory one user wanted to put to the test. He wanted to see how many applications he could open without the phone slowing down or crashing. Without any apps open the amount of free RAM stood at 140MB, but even when having 12-15 apps open the RAM was still an impressive 58MB. I could see no visible slowdown when having that many applications open. Check out the video after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Michal Jerz over at My-Symbian recently got his hands on the Samsung Omnia HD (as it’s known in Poland) and promptly has run some benchmarks to compare it against the Nokia 5800. Even without doing a CPU benchmark, he felt that it was much faster just be observing its UI speed. This feeling was backed up by seeing benchmark numbers from the Speedy Go! S60 app.

Speedy Go! provides a speed test feature that estimates the normal phone speed and the speed gain achieved by acceleration. The i8910 HD managed a phone speed of 410 against the Nokia 5800 XM’s phone speed of 264, a 55 percent increase. For the Speedy speed test, the Omnia HD was 66 percent faster (446 for Omnia HD vs. 269 for 5800 XM). Read the rest of this entry »

Nokia’s Ovi Store, the company’s answer to Apple’s App Store and Google Android saw its launch yesterday. The service has had a slow start as a spike in traffic has meant that many people have been unable to get into the store.

Having a quick browse around the store earlier today, the only handsets that can be chosen on the website are around 50 Nokia handsets only. We do know that Symbian S40 and S60 handsets from Samsung and LG will also be supported, although there is no official confirmation of this on the site right now. However, i8910 Omnia HD users are already reporting that the Ovi store can be accessed from the handset and a number of apps can be downloaded and installed. Let us know your experiences of the Ovi store in the comments below or in the forum.

We have already seen a number of photos showing the Orange branded Samsung i8910 Omnia HD handset in all its glory. We now thought we’d share some photos as to what the actual Orange branded user interface looks like courtesy of SOHD forum user scoopex. From the screengrabs that we’ve seen the Orange branding doesn’t look too bad.

Interestingly, one screengrab shows the firmware version that is currently being used in Orange handsets. The phone is using the I8910ORAIE2 customised Orange firmware, which is based on the I8910BVIE2 software version. The date of this firmware is from 6th May 2009, it will be interesting to see how proactive Samsung will be in providing firmware updates for the phone. I do wonder whether the sim-free handsets will come with a different software version compared to the current I8910BVIE2 when it is launched next month. Check out all of the screengrabs after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

All About Symbian has posted the last part of a three part preview on the Omnia HD. In the first preview, AAS discussed the general design and hardware. In the second, they went through all parts related to the imaging (camera and HD video) side. The last part covers the software elements of the phone such as GPS, web, Touchwiz as well as overall conclusions.

This preview seems to be the longest out of all three. It goes through the individual applications to quite some depth. Some (crucial) parts were untested like GPS, but will be covered in the final review. Click through for a summary on the key points. Read the rest of this entry »

Samsung is to pre-load fring, which allows integrated VoIP calling and messaging on its Omnia HD phone. Fring is free although users must pay for the data they use within their existing mobile tariff. Fring connects its users via Fring itself as well as other major social and community applications including Skype, Facebook, MSN Messenger, GoogleTalk, Twitter, Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ and Orkut.

The deal extends the partnership between the two firms: fring is a member of the Samsung Mobile Innovator programme and has already pre-loaded on the Samsung Innov8.