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 »

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!