Yesterday I was lucky enough to have had a hands-on session with the all new Nokia N8. I must say that I was really impressed with the device and consider the Nokia N8 as the next level in multimedia smartphones.

For those of you interested in whats going on under the hood of the Nokia N8, here is a more detailed breakdown:

So what do you think? Is this the phone you are waiting to get your hands on?

The Samsung I8910 Omnia HD may be more than a year old already but it still stacks up against the better smartphones out there. In fact, I wouldn’t even go that far and call this phone a smartphone, cause its clear that when Samsung released this phone it was to satisfy the needs of all the multimedia junkies out there.

The I8910 Omnia HD features a 3.7″ AMOLED display ensuring that all things multimedia looks absolutely brilliant on the device. And when you have a 8 Megapixel camera capable of recording 720p HD Ready video you are sure to need a bright and colour rich screen like this.

The Samsung I8910 was the first phone that was capable of recording 720p HD Ready video, yet it never catched on as a must have device.

The 8 Megapixel camera on the I8910 is capable of taking gorgeous snapshots, even some closeup tests rendered crisp and clear images. The camera comes with all sorts of features, one that stood out to me was the panoramic setting that allows you to take 180 degree panoramic photos by just turning 180 degrees with the phone in your hand automatically taking a few snapshots and then auto stitching them together to render a seamless panoramic scene.

Another sign that the Samsung I8910 is built for multimedia is its support for video formats. Out of the box the I8910 supports DivX format allowing you to watch any DivX or XVid compressed video on the device, I tested it out with an episode of IT Crowd and playback was smooth and in sync. If I was on the go I could easily watch my series on the 3.7″ AMOLED screen.

Although the Samsung Omnia HD has all these great multimedia capabilities, one thing that kind of annoyed me was the interface. Me being used to Android now, I found it hard to get used to the Symbian OS on the I8910. That aside, I still think the interface is simple to operate, maybe too simple and that may be why I am not liking it and other power users will also.

The Samsung I8910 Omnia HD runs an ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz CPU with PowerVR SGX graphics to power that HD video playback and 3D games. It also features 7.2Mbps HSDPA, b/g WiFi and Bluetooth for all your networking needs and a Li-Ion 1500 mAh battery capable of 600 h standby time on 2G and 13 h 30 min talk time on 2G.

My conclusion, the Samsung I8910 Omnia HD is a superb multimedia phone, capable taking clear high resolution photos and HD Ready video with its 8 Megapixel auto focus camera and built in flash. Gaming graphics on the device is also superb and not to mention the DivX / XVid support. My wife loved this phone and if you are just like her and into photos and videos and like to take snaps on the go then this is the phone for you.

One thing where this phone could have been improved was perhaps with the operating system, but then again that is just me. If you are used to Symbian then it gives you just more reason to like it, I on the other hand would have loved to have Android run on this baby, luckily there is the Samsung Galaxy S out now.

All in all the Samsung I8910 gets my thumbs up as a superb multimedia device for people on the move.

Get the best out of your multimedia content by installing the latest version of the open-source multimedia framework and player.

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
It doesn’t need any external codec or program to work.

You can download VLC 1.0 for Windows here or for other operating systems gou have a look here.