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 »

Now that the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD has finally found its way into reviewer’s arms, it looks like we may finally start to see some final reviews of Samsung’s wonder handset. Following two preview articles on the i8910, GSMArena has finally released its full review.

They confirmed that the delay was due to the fact that Samsung froze production of the i8910 shortly after its release on carriers at the end of May due to software problems. It claims that the handset is now available worldwide with “all bugs fixed”.

Their overall verdict was certainly a positive one, calling it “one of the best equipped handsets we’ve ever had the chance to review.” It refers to the AMOLED screen as “one of the top units in the touchscreen realm.” They were pleased with the HD camcorder output (given the improvement in audio), although they felt there was room for improvement with the framerate.

The review includes a number of camera and video samples. I couldn’t see exactly what firmware was being used, but it would be interesting to know. You can check out their full review here.

Okay, so I know that a lot of you have the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD already and I know that many of you have seen quite a few i8910 unboxing videos too, but I couldn’t resist throwing mine into the ring too! We put together a quick video that shows us unboxing the handset and we’ve also included some pictures of the whole thing too.

The i8910 HD we were sent was the Italian version, so the box included a European plug and Italian manuals, but this is not too much of an issue. I was a bit upset not to find the key-ring phone stand in the box, this was included in the Orange UK boxes. Initial impressions of the phone are very positive and it’s certainly not as tall as we’d come to believe. We’re still at the very early stages of playing around with the handset, so expect some more useful updates going forward. In the mean time check out our unboxing video and pictures after the break. Read the rest of this entry »