Now we’re talking, hopefully all of the ranting and petitions regarding the woeful i8910 HD support is starting to pay off. Samsung has officially confirmed that it will be releasing a new firmware update for the handset delivering a “faster, smoother multimedia experience.”

The new firmware will deliver faster web browsing (finally), an improved graphics engine as well as kinetic scrolling. Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

-Webkit update: A faster user-interface when online, for swift navigation of your favourite websites
-Graphic engine: An improved graphic engine, increasing the speed to access the multimedia content
-Kinetic scrolling: The addition of a kinetic scrolling system provides a superior full-touch experience

There’s no mention for proper 24fps HD video recording but we’ll take what we can get right now. The update will be landing in January 2010 via Samsung’s PC Studio 7 software. It will arrive first in the UK and then gradually rolled out to other markets. We’ll bring you our first impressions as soon as it does hit. Until then have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Panashe Michael Ngwerume really cares about the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD. He cares so much that he was compelled to document all of the issues he has faced with the handset. However, this is not your usual bug list, he has written a comprehensive 25-page report that he hopes will be seen by Samsung to rectify some of the issues.

There is growing vocal dissidence against Samsung, where many people feel that they have given up support on what was meant to be its flagship handset. We’ve already reported on our issues on this and there are many other people that feel the same. A petition was struck up by Ngwerume, however he also went that one step further.

I’d suggest all i8910 owners to have a read of the PDF, it really is a comprehensive report and includes some solutions for some of the problems suffered. Kudos goes to Ngwerume for all his hard work and let’s hope that someone from Samsung listens.

Via Engadget Mobile.

You’ve probably all seen the headlines by now. Samsung is rumoured to drop Symbian support on future handsets according to Samsung VP Don Joo Lee. This follows an analyst report that suggested something very similar. Samsung’s roadmap will instead concentrate on the company’s newly announced Bada platform, along with Android and Windows Mobile.

To be honest, this news surprises me not in the slightest. You just have to look at the support given to the company’s supposed flagship, the Samsung i8910 HD, to see that the phone and OS was not on the top list of priorities.

Where did it all go so wrong? When the phone was announced at MWC earlier in the year there was so much promise. Even now, purely looking at the hardware side, it’s still one of the most feature-rich phones on the market. You get a beautiful 3.7-inch OLED capacitive display, HD video recording, 8MP camera, excellent codec support and 8GB/16GB internal storage. This phone has it all, even compared to anything on the market or announced as we speak. Read the rest of this entry »

Rumours are currently circulating that the i8910 HD is now being sold with a 1GHz processor. This follows the phone’s launch in India, with a placeholder clearly highlighting the apparently upgraded processor. Whilst you could attribute this to just human error, the same 1GHZ CPU has been listed on the official Samsung India website.

The i8910 Omnia HD currently has a Texas Instruments OMAP3430 ARM chip with 600MHz clock speed. I would be surprised if this was upped to an TI OMAP3640 ARM chip that has a 1GHz clock speed. Apart from the cost considerations, the move would alienate its existing customers i.e. why not include this from the start?

Whilst some may question whether this multimedia workhorse even needs more power, I’d argue that it does. Not for most of the tasks you’ll use it for, but it would certainly come in handy for one of the phones key selling points, HD video recording. The whole debacle surrounding the AMR/AAC audio issue when recording video, stems from the high CPU stress of the current chip.

Indeed, for one of the phone’s most marketable features, you can tell that the 720p HD video recording just isn’t quite there yet. Apart from the audio issue, HD videos often drop frames, especially when panning fast objects. By sticking in a faster processor, this would hopefully eradicate these issues and enable much better audio quality with a higher sampling rate.

I’m still dubious if this will really come true, but if it does, what do current owners think of this news? The Omnia HD will be available in India for 33,990 INR ($705). We’ve included a few screenshots of the evidence after the jump.

Update: GSMArena has confirmed that the 1GHz Samsung i8910 HD was indeed a misprint on both the website & placeholder. Samsung India added the 420 MHz DSP (the sound processing chip) speed to the 600 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU to get to 1GHz. Read the rest of this entry »

There has been no hiding from the fact that the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD has not been as widely available as one would expect at this stage. Remember, this is a handset that was released in the UK around the middle of May. Here we are, two months later and sim-free handsets are still hard to come by (well in the UK at least).

There may be a valid reason for this. According to GSMArena, the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD will effectively get a re-launch on 1st August selling for €540. They go on to say that mass production was stopped shortly after the soft launch “for some i-dotting and t-crossing to take place”.

Now exactly what that means is anyone’s guess. Could Samsung have taken the phone back to the drawing board for some (minor) internal changes? Or are the changes all related to firmware? We recently saw the IG2 firmware release that has enabled AAC audio when using video recording. That particular firmware is currently localised to the Italian market, but maybe Samsung are including a version of this to ship in all handsets?

At this moment in time, one can only guess what exactly Samsung wanted to fix before the handset received wider availability. However, it is interesting that some of the major mobile phone websites out there (like GSMArena and All About Symbian) refuse to publish reviews until they get hands-on with final sim-free i8910 HD handsets.

We received an email from Samsung PR yesterday apologising for the delay in sending out handsets to Omnia HD Ambassadors. They attributed the delay to the following: “The delay has occurred because of an update to the software being used, and Samsung want to ensure that you have the newest software during your use of the handset.” This is likely to mean that the bug squashing is related to software rather than hardware changes. After all, how much of an uproar from the early adopters would there be, if newer versions of the phone had some ‘enhanced’ features. Anyway, there’s not too long to find out now. We should be getting our handset within the next couple of weeks (fingers crossed!)

Thanks box360!

This is the firmware fix that everyone’s been waiting for. Samsung Italy has announced that a new firmware update has been released that enables AAC audio when video recording. The I8910XXIG2 update promises to replace the poor quality AMR audio with AAC when video recording at 720p HD resolutions. Whilst the AAC-fix is only included for HD video recording, hopefully the lower resolutions (D1, VGA) will get the same fix in future firmware updates. The update also adds a couple of games (Poker and Brain Challenge).

Before you all rush off to update your firmware, it’s worth noting that you will need Italian firmware on your phone before attempting the update. You will also need PC Studio 7 and you need to make sure that the sim-card is inside the phone when attempting the upgrade.

We haven’t seen an official changelog yet, but will keep you updated as soon as we do. There’s no news when other regions will get the update, but hopefully it can’t be too far away. There are already a number of YouTube videos from Italian users who are giving examples of the new audio fix. Check out one such example after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

It appears a fix for the much-maligned video recording issue on the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD may be on its way. If you remember, Samsung is currently using the AMR audio codec, which means that when recording video the sound quality is quite poor. It has been the biggest criticism that the phone has received since its launch.

Samsung Italia has now given an update on its Facebook page that is likely to please both current and prospective i8910 owners. It is saying that two updates are planned in the coming weeks. The first update will be released next week and will improve the general performance of the phone. The second update will replace the AMR codec with AAC when recording video at HD 720p resolutions. This particular update is planned for release in a fortnight’s time.

We would still be cautious until we hear it from a more official source, especially as Samsung always insisted that due to the sheer data being processed at 720p, a more enhanced audio codec wasn’t feasible. Also, it’s unknown at this stage whether AAC is coming to lower-resolution video recording such as VGA as well. So far, there is no confirmation on the Samsung Innovator boards, but fingers crossed this much needed update is on the way.

Thanks KILLERluki!

There has been much furore over the audio codec used whilst video recording. The AMR-NB codec at an 8,000Hz sampling rate means that HD video recording is combined with sub-standard sound quality. Samsung has said that it is using the AMR codec as it provides the best balance when recording HD video, without stressing the OMAP3 CPU too heavily. Whilst this is understandable, it is hard to understand why the phone uses this same AMR codec when recording at lower resolutions.

Up until now, Samsung has not communicated clearly whether a fix for this is on the agenda. Some of the comments made in the Samsung Innovator forum (which is meant to be for developers) have been open to interpretation. However, it seems that this audio problem is now being “escalated” to a number of divisions within Samsung, following complaints.

Ben, who is a Samsung developer on the Innovator forum, has confirmed that the AAC issue has been escalated “through the development team to understand the problem, through the engineering organisation to try to understand whether this is a defect or is by design, escalated through the management side to alert them to the need to plan for firmware updates, escalated through the management side to alert them to the damage this issue is causing.”

Now, this doesn’t mean a fix is definitely on the way. After all, the Samsung INNOV8 i8510 uses the same AMR codec and this has never been upgraded in firmware updates up until now. However, it certainly is encouraging that Samsung is starting to listen to its consumers. Fingers crossed, that an update is planned and hopefully not too far away.

Despite heavy criticism, Samsung has once again confirmed that it will stick to its choice of the AMR-Narrow Band audio codec when video recording. A spokesman on the Innovator forum said that there is currently no plan to upgrade this audio to the AAC codec in future firmware releases.

He also confirmed that the audio codec used in the latest firmware (XXIE4) will use the same AMR-NB codec when video recording. Interestingly, when using the voice recorder, the AAC codec is available. This news is a big shame, especially as it sounds like Samsung doesn’t even have this issue on its agenda to ‘fix’. It looks like the AMR codec for video recording is here to stay.

Thanks scoopex!

Symbian Freak has published a short user preview of the i8910 Omnia HD. They come up with some interesting points that I hadn’t heard before. The user talks about having to double tap to register menu options while a single tap suffices for icon options, which takes some getting used to. There is also apparently an issue with bad EXIF information on photos. The timestamp on the photos are 1 hour behind the phone clock and the GPS information gives wrong readings for the longitude measurement.

On the positive side, the battery cover is found to be more sturdy than previously reported, the video flash support is excellent, the capacitive screen is one of the best seen and nearly as sensitive as the iPod touch and the video recording is also very good (despite the poor audio). He was using an Orange branded handset. Check out the key points after the break. Read the rest of this entry »