Skyfire has launched version 1.5 of its mobile browser for Symbian S50 5th Edition handsets (including the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD). The update brings full support for high-resolution screens, a new UI and finger-friendly scrolling (including kinetic scrolling). You can download the Skyfire browser here. Check out a video of it in action after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Spotify has finally released its app for Symbian S60 handsets, including our beloved Samsung i8910 Omnia HD. Similar to the Android app, the S60 client supports an offline mode that caches tracks onto the phone’s memory for those times when you don’t have a signal.

Before you rush of to download it, remember it will only work if you are already have a Spotify Premium subscription, which costs £9.99 per month. Check out a couple of quick preview videos after the cut. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been having a good play around with the Opera Mobile 10 Beta, that was released for Symbian handsets earlier this week. I’ve posted my video impressions after the jump and overall it makes a big difference to the overall i8910 experience. Let’s be honest the default browser on the handset isn’t the best, and Opera improves on it in a number of areas.

It adds tabbed browsing, speed dials, Opera Turbo (for low bandwidth use) and generally a full desktop experience on the handset. One nice bonus, is that it also adds kinetic scrolling too. If you want to play around with the settings type ‘Opera:Config’ into the browser and you’ll get a wealth of options.

It’s not all rosy though, there’s no flash support on the browser, no sound/tactile feedback and the keyboard can be a bit tricky to use. However, you can use the default keyboard by changing the settings (see the video for the tip). It’s been reported that it can be a bit of a battery eater but it’s too early for me to judge this. Check out our video after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Opera has a released the beta of Opera Mobile 10 for Symbian/S60 handsets today. Samsung i8910 Omnia HD owners will happy to know that this includes support for S60 5th Edition. It looks like an exciting release with Speed Dial, tabbed browsing and a password manager. I’m especially looking forward to the first two, which should make the browsing experience more pleasurable (& hopefully) faster.

Opera claims that this beta is twice as fast as the previous version targeted to Symbian handsets. Opera has also included Opera Turbo, the company’s server-side compression technology that should help performance in weaker 3G areas.

I’ve not had a chance to download it myself yet, but will be giving it a whirl shortly. The beta is free to download to your computer from here or directly to your mobile phone by typing the following: http://m.opera.com/mobile/. If you are looking for more information on the beta, click here for the developer’s introduction to the Opera Mobile 10 beta. Check out a video of the beta in action after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite the fact that we already have the Nokia Ovi and Samsung Application Store, Symbian has launched an all encompassing app store. The Horizon Directory is expected to be the one-shop stop for all symbian phone applications. The great news is that Horizon will include all apps currently found in the number of different application stores (including Ovi, Samsung App Store & AT&T’s Media Mall).

The Horizon Directory went live today with around 50 apps (including YouTube, Twitter and Qik clients).As we move into next year, Symbian expects “to process thousands of applications”. The Symbian Signed process will also change over the next few months allowing a developer to automatically ad an application to the directory.

It’s quite an easy site to navigate with both view by ‘Free’ and ‘Paid’ options. You can also filter the most popular apps or just the apps for your handset. There are currently seven listed apps for the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD including SPB Brain Evolution, SkyeSpy, Buddycloud, SPB TV, SkyeCaller II, SPB Puzzle, SPB Wallet. Hopefully this list will expand as we move into 2009.

Via Trusted Reviews.

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 »