Many of you know that I’m re-cutting my teeth in the smartphone world over at MyOmniaPro. What better way to track the smartphones as they move closer to MID and UMPC territory than to buy one, write about it and talk to the smartphone fans and experts out there. I even joined my first ever smartphone podcast this evening with WMpoweruser, PDA.pl and UnwiredView.com. It was great to talk to those guys about features, user requirements and operating systems. Running a blog at the edge of your core catchment area is a great way to keep a balanced view.

I haven’t started the breakdown on the Omnia Pro Web experience yet but I can say it’s leaning towards ‘browsing’ rather than ‘Web2.0’ which really doesn’t bode well for people looking for the full internet experience. The keyboard is nice though and way better than the one on my Nokia N810. It’s not as good as the king of smartphone keyboards, the HTC Touch Pro2 but it’s good. I have some gripes about the exposed camera lens and the less-than-rugged touchscreen plastic but the main problem for me is the corner-cutting needed to squeeze everything into the small form factor. I mentioned convergence in my last post and the Omnia Pro is a classic example. A camera without a lens cover. A WVGA screen that needs zooming to read web pages. A video editor that recompresses the video to a very low quality. A dnlp/upnp network player that doesn’t handle big video resolutions and a size that, to be honest, really is too big for my 24/7 jeans-pocket.

The Omnia Pro is a great smartphone and way better than smartphones I have tested in the past. It will impress anyone looking for that kind of a device and packs a huge amount of feature into a slick, stylish pocketable form factor. MID and UMPC manufacturers have a lot to learn from it and devices like it.

The AMOLED screen quality is stunning in an indoor environment and as a twitter and microblogging tool, it’s superb. The on screen keyboard blows away anything you’ll use on a current Windows device and it’s tied together with a nice (very little Wm6.1 viewable on this!) finger-focused user interface. Battery life appears to take you through a connected (although relatively idle) day.

I’ll be working through the Omnia Pro over the next few weeks (and taking it to the Maemo summit for a head to head with the N900) so stay tuned. It will be an interesting journey. Here’s the first of my videos. It covers the Omnia Pro hardware.

Note: I’ll be covering the Archos Android Tablet next week too although I won’t be starting a blog on it. Three is enough for the time being!

Source: myomniapro.com

• About My Omnia Pro Smartphone Experiment.
• Omnia Pro B7610 Smartphone is another MID contender.
• Compal MID Photography