The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the flagship phone for Android right now, being the only device shipping with 4.0 on-board.

Hardware

Screen
The device features one of the largest screen sizes we’ve seen on a smartphone, supporting a Super AMOLED 4.65” display running a massive 1280×720 resolution. This screen is clearly made for content consumption, ideal for watching movies on a plane or train. There is one problem with a screen size that large, it takes a lot of battery to power it.

While the phone sounds huge in size, when you get it in your hand, its actually surprisingly manageable. This is likely due to it’s weight, only a measly 135 grams. The whole device is thin as well, with only the slightest tapering out at the bottom its dimensions are 67.94mm wide, 135.5mm tall,  and 8.94mm thick (or thin).

Cameras
The rear camera is 5 megapixel with an LED flash, pretty standard right now. The Galaxy Nexus does also have with continuous auto focus, making it great for shooting objects that are varying distance from your shooting position. Despite being able to fire off photos with almost no shutter lag, you will still need to keep the phone still as blurry photos are still very possible.

The camera can also record 1080p video, which looks gorgeous, particularly when played back on the 4.65” HD display. Naturally with smaller optics, you want good lighting and a stable hand to get the best out of it.

The front facing camera is a 1.3 megapixel standard camera, nothing ground breaking there. It would be great to see some innovation here, its a feature that’s moved from optional, to a requirement, so lets get some more quality up front. Then the photos might actually be useable for more than a postage stamp sized profile photo.

Storage
There’s only one size available, it’s 16GB and isn’t expandable. For most people this won’t be an issue, but enthusiasts with a large number of apps or media collection, this may create a problem.

Performance
Supporting a 1.2Ghz dual-core processor and 1GB RAM, it’s unlikely you’ll come across a phone with higher specs. Paired with Android 4.0, the speed of the device is impressive, although competitors achieve similar speeds with lower specs. The power really comes when delivering intensive 3D games at 1280×720 while running background processes. 

NFC
Also known as Android Beam, near field communication is in the Galaxy Nexus, but there’s not really anyone to test it with. Sharing files, applications will become easier, but will needs a wide proliferation of devices to support this before it is feasible. Some early adopters may have MasterCard PayPass or Visa Paywave setup, but right now, it’s early. There’s always a chicken and egg argument when it comes to new technology like this, so for the negligible cost of including an NFC chip and writing software around it, it’s a welcome inclusion for the future.

Networks
With pretty standard HSPA+/3G/EDGE/GPRS support, the Galaxy Nexus unfortunately can’t take advantage of Telstra’s shiny new high-speed 4G network. There’s also no support for Telstra’s HD voice calling, missing the critical WB-AMR (Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate) support. The Galaxy Nexus does support Telstra’s HD voice calling, one of the few devices that do.

More info at – http://www.google.com.au/nexus/#/tech-specs

Gallery

Software

Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) has been long awaited by Android fans since it was shown off by Google back in October. There’s no carrier or manufacturer skin here, the Galaxy Nexus ships with a pure Google experience. To be honest, there’s really no need for any of them to customise it, Android 4.0 is a solid release. Let’s take a look at what’s new.

Folders
Applications can now be sorted into folders, this works much the same as iOS. Folders can also be docked to one of four positions on the favourites tray. With only 5 home screens available in the default ICS rom, folders will help you load up with a decent catalogue of apps.

Built-in apps
The device ships with a folder of Google apps, these include Maps, Gmail, Calendar, Google+, Music, Market, Talk, YouTube, Navigation and Messenger. This demonstrates the strength of the Google properties, with coverage of almost all core features. Despite these being included out of the box, there is always room for third party apps to innovate and improve on the default offering.

Multi-tasking
With capacitive hardware buttons gone, all operations are now done with software buttons. One of the buttons you quickly become familiar with is the app switching or multi-tasking button. The right-most button of the three displays a really beautiful list of previously run applications. Depending on the app, some of these may be still running, or alternatively paused until your switch back to it. By comparison to both iOS and WP7, this app switcher is the best in the industry right now.

Face unlock
One of the showcase features when ICS was detailed, Face unlock is a gimmick. The biggest problem here is the time taken for the phone to do the analysis and then unlock. The reality is that entering a pin code or swipe gesture is faster. With a task that will be done multiple times per day, fast always wins.

Updates
As a platform, Android 4.0 was supposed to solve the long-running, heavily criticised fragmentation issue, however it seems the issue still remains. The Telstra review unit is still running 4.0.1, despite 4.0.3 being available from Google. It may only contain some additional API changes and bug fixes, but I want the latest release, without delay from carriers.

Panorama stitching
There is a lot of solutions for on-device panorama creation, well thanks for playing, but Google has it under control now. To create a panorama, it’s a simple as firing up the camera app, switch to panorama mode and film left to right, just as if you were shooting video. After a bit of processing, you’ll have your nice landscape panorama. While occasional stitching errors can occur, this is a decent implementation. Like any other photos or videos shot with the phone, your panorama can be shared to your favourite social network right from the app.

Issues

HD app support
With all the extra pixels to play with, you’d expect to see a lot more content fitting on the display. The problem is that most apps are simply scaled up, meaning that you’ll still only see the same number of tweets, Facebook posts or news items. Naturally apps created by Google do support the HD resolution, so the browser, mail and others look fantastic. Over time, some application developers will update their apps to take advantage of the larger screen, but this will take time.

Battery life
Powering a 4.65” display doesn’t come cheap, add to that the power drain of running multiple apps and you start to get an idea of what the battery life is like on the Galaxy Nexus. The short answer is, you’ll struggle to get through a day. The problem exists in most smart phones these days, the more we can do with these pocket computers, the more we use them, the more battery we burn through.

The good news here is that the battery is replaceable, just peel off that flimsy plastic back and insert an extended battery (not included).

Browser
While the techAU website displays fine on most browsers (including older Android browsers) the Android 4.0 browser has a strange issue where the content text in posts was only half the width of the available space. This is by no means an extensive test of websites, but is interesting that it would render a page differently than any other browser, mobile or desktop.

Screen rotation lag
When rotating the device, particularly in the camera / photo apps the delay in response is severe. A pretty basic function, something you’ll likely do multiple times a day, can take a number of seconds to respond. With a dual-core processor, this just shouldn’t happen, there’s really no excuse for it.

Low Audio levels
It seems the speaker in the Galaxy Nexus could have done with some extra dbs. From the music player to incoming calls, the phone on maximum volume isn’t very loud.

Pricing

The Galaxy Nexus I reviewed was from Telstra, which offers the phone from $69pm month +handset repayment on a two year plan. With a phone that begs to be used for media creation and consumption, having good network performance is important. Try uploading a 1080p video on anything else and you’ll want to cry. One thing I was impressed with, was the speed at which multiple applications would download and install simultaneously.

Overall

The Galaxy Nexus is the best Android phone available today. If you’re in the market for an Android phone, this should be your first option. Take a look at the issues section, if none of these really concern you then your set, get the Galaxy Nexus. There is no perfect device, but the Galaxy Nexus is by far the best Android device I’ve used. If your needs dictate that you need something smaller, then wait, Android 4.0 should now be a requirement for your Android purchase.

The Galaxy Nexus stacks up well against competitors and I’d be happy to carry one in my pocket. As for Android, before version 4.0 it was hard for me to recommend Android, but with this release, all the important pieces to a smartphone ecosystem are in place and finally with some design consistency.

More information at http://www.google.com.au/nexus/#/index or buy it from Telstra.

Samsung is in dire need of some advice regarding patents, it seems. Another play in the ongoing patent struggle between Samsung and Apple has resulted in Apple giving Samsung some ‘workarounds’ in order to finally appease Apple’s demands. While this may seem like a good idea, it almost seems like Apple is just deliberately trolling Samsung for a laugh – though it is entirely possible what they’re asking for could result in a change in Samsung’s design choices.

The first set of recommendations relate specifically to the Galaxy S2 smartphone, including having a front surface that isn’t black, non-rectangular in shape or without rounded corners, non-horizontal speaker slots and no front bezel at all. Most of these suggestions describe most modern smartphones, so it would be interesting to see if Apple goes after other major manufacturers if they were to win this battle, like HTC.

The Verge noted that Apple also listed alternative options for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, namely:

• overall shape that isn’t rectangular, or doesn’t have rounded corners
• thick frames around the screen
• front surface that isn’t flat
• profiles that aren’t thin
• cluttered appearance

Apple believes the changes that Samsung made with its 10.1N version of the Galaxy Tab weren’t enough, and recently asked a German court to ban the new version. We’ll see if Samsung takes any further notice of Apple’s suggestions, and whether Samsung can ever finally get a break.

More @ The Verge

Twitter user WP_DownUnder posted a very interesting photo today, showing an Samsung Omnia 7 at an Optus Store. Clearly something very wrong has happened with Optus’ promotional card that accompanies the phone.

Among the features listed is HD Video Recording, Mobile Xbox, Microsoft Office, 3G/dual band connectivity and yep, Symbian OS. Wrong. The Samsung Omnia 7 actually runs Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS, not Symbian. By now the reality of Symbian’s future is widely known, so a consumers are likely to avoid any device running Symbian like the plague. It’s marketing mistakes like this, along with personal biases / kickbacks from other OS manufacturers that are hurting WP7.

The Omnia 7 is actually a really solid device, as per our review when it launched. In fact the device is often regarded as one of the best first generation WP7 devices.

Original @ http://twitpic.com/7hnh50

The MacBook Air’s closest rival is the Samsung Series 9. While the best Ultrabook on the Windows-side, it’s biggest downside has always been it’s exorbitant price. The sexy black brushed aluminium laptop went on sale in Australia exclusively at Harvey Norman for A$2,499. It’s RRP has now dropped to A$2,299 according to Samsung’s own Aussie site.

User asa79 over OzBargain.com.au pointed to a sale of $1,000 off the regular price at Harvey Norman. This looks to have been a run out deal as all references to the Samsung Series 9 has now been removed from Harvey’s site.

I saw this at Harvey’s today, they are selling out all their stock of Samsung (Apple air clones) at $1000 off retail price for $1498. Looks like a good deal much better then the old $2499 price tag.

The NP900X3A-B02AU model was opened up to other retailers like JB Hi-Fi but searches on their site also yields no results. This is quite strange, given JB HiFi is listen on Samsung’s own site when you use the ‘Where to buy’ link.

It may be Halloween, but it seems the Samsung Series 9 is pulling a disappearing act.

The latest Windows Phone offering from Samsung has just been announced. The Samsung Omnia W is the latest in a growing list of Mango devices which will ship with Windows Phone 7.5.

The Omnia W will feature a 3.7-inch AMOLED display, down from the 4.0” on the Omnia 7 which was widely regarded as one of the best WP7 displays. The Omnia W will have an upgraded 1.4GHz single-core processor, 512MB RAM, 8GB storage, a 5-megapixel rear-facing and VGA front-facing camera.

It is surprising just how similar the phone’s specs are to its predecessor, especially considering we’re more than a year on from the Omnia 7’s release. The Samsung Omnia W will start shipping at the end of October to some countries, which looks to miss the Mango launch.

Telstra have also confirmed Mango will begin rolling out to Windows Phones in the next two weeks, adding to Optus and Vodafone who are also ready to roll.

More @ The Next Web

Met with a huge round of applause, Windows Division President Steven Sinofsky just announced 5000 build developers will get a Samsung tablet running Windows 8. There’s an abundance of sensors for developers to take advantage of, check out the graphic below for the full list.

The Build conference sold out before any kind of agenda was released, those who travelled to build are no doubt very happy with their decision. Look for lots of reviews and hands-on content to flow throughout the day as the Windows Developer Preview PC’s get picked up.

Oprah would be proud.

Yesterday we heard the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 would be delayed for release in Australia upon resolution of a Federal Court order. Apple claimed that Samsung had infringed 10 patents including look and feel, and touchscreen technology in the iPad. The court has also ordered Samsung to allow Apple access to three samples of the Galaxy Tab.

Samsung has announced the launch the Australian Model of the Galaxy Tablet will go ahead as planned. Turns out the tab in question is not the same model that was covered by the court order, in fact was never intended to be sold in Australia. It’s hard to imagine how the Australian model varies so dramatically that none of the 10 patents are impacted by the variant.

The launch of the Australian Galaxy Tab 10.1 is scheduled for next Thursday, 11th of August.

Wow. According to Engadget, SID 2011 is gonna be interesting next week, people – it may just feature one kick-arse display from Samsung. Said tablet is a 10.1-inch LCD panel which has a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, and a PPI of 330, slightly higher than the iPhone’s LG-manufactured Retina Display which sits at 326ppi. It’s been a while coming for larger screens and hopefully we’ll finally see some very cool looking tablets, and if Samsung can release a tablet with this sort of screen before Apple they’ll be in a good spot to gain some market share (providing they don’t just let Apple source these displays!). The display will also be easy on batteries, as it uses the RGBW matrix – something as simple as the display may revolutionise the tablet game already.

LG is also set to make an appearance at SID 2011, however details are scarce – LG has told Engadget that there’ll be a multitude of sizes coming, between 3.5- and 84-inch and all using (presumably) some awesome resolutions, with LG stating that they’ll be using ‘ultra-high resolutions’ and Advanced High Performance IPS technology.

So what does this mean? We should be seeing some impressive tablets in the next year or so as Samsung in particular appear to be trying to get these to market quickly and LG hopefully not far behind. It could also spark Apple into using a Retina Display on the iPad 3, which could be sourced from LG seeing as they already use LG screens on the iPhone 4. Either way, we should expect some pretty big steps forward in consumer tablet screens in the not too distant future. Cool!

More @ Engadget.com & SID.org

Samsung have just released press shots of these new ‘light’ weight’ 3D glasses. On a new Japanese website samsungtomorrow.com they claim the glasses are the lightest ever 3D glasses. Thanks to the magic of Bing Translator, English speaking individuals can read the news as well.

Made by luxury glasses manufacturer Sihouete and weighing in at just 28 grams, they are really light, well done. The problem is, the weight of the glasses has nothing to do with the reason people aren’t lining up in droves for 3DTVs. Even the most enthusiastic 3D supported has to admit all of the glasses (these included) are ugly. Can someone please get Oakley on the phone ? Its unlikely that you’ll ever look cool wearing glasses inside, but there’s a long way to go before you don’t look like a tool.

There’s even a 50/50 weight distribution to avoid pressure on your nose. Samsung, you really have pulled out all the stops here. The Samsung 3D glasses do have one redeeming feature, the ability to auto-detect wether your wearing them and automatically power them on or off. This conserves battery life, that’s right, get used to charging your glasses.

Samsung may not be the only ones with 3D glasses announcements this week, with CES 2011 about to get underway. 3DTV is sure to be, yet again, a big theme of the show.

Via Gizmodo

Hardware

Screen
Samsung have done a great job on the build quality of the Omnia 7, it’s 4 inch AMOLED screen looks great. Black levels are stunning, so dark that black areas of the screen blends into the surrounding glossy black hardware. Video playback on the large screen looks amazing, so good that you’ll happily consume a lot of video on the device. The Omnia 7 would really benefit from a solution to watch hands-free video, any device gets awkward to hold after a while.

Most of the time the 1Ghz Qualcomm processor is pretty zippy, those occasional times where lag or delays were experienced, I’d assign to software glitches that’ll be fixed in an OS update (hopefully coming soon). The Omnia 7 actually beats the iPhone 4 in boot time by a number of seconds.

Hardware Buttons
Required by all WP7 devices, the 3 hardware buttons on the Omnia 7 are a physical home button and 2 capacitive buttons for back and search. Back and Home do as you’d expect, where as the search button is context sensitive. Pressing it in most instances will take you to the Bing search page to search online, from there you can choose from news or web results. In the Marketplace however search allows you to get to apps quickly, at least the ones you know the name of. What’s strange about search is that its not supported my the Zune app. So those of us with large music libraries have to resort to death by scrolling, rather than searching your music collection. Expect this to be fixed soon.

Storage
Most WP7 devices including the Samsung Omnia 7 has only 8GB of storage. After being used to 16GB on the iPhone for the past 3 years, 8GB feels cramped, very cramped. By the time you add music, photos, video and applications it runs out pretty fast.

Camera
It’s easy to point out that there’s 5 megapixels of camera in this bad boy, but we all know that’s next to meaningless in terms of the final picture quality of photos. There’s a number of options in the settings to adjust quality, image stabilisation, LED flash, ISO, high dynamic range and quite a few more. These differ per WP7 device, so if your considering a device from a different manufacturer, make sure you check out the options here. The also does video, recording up to 1280×720 HD, but is strangely set to VGA by default.

You’ve likely heard about the pocket to picture feature of WP7, allowing photos to be taken even if the device is locked, it does come in handy. One problem with the camera is that none of your settings are saved, not even wether you used the still or video camera last. This increases the time it takes to be able to shoot again, the exact problem pocket to picture was supposed to solve.

Check out the gallery below to see photos and videos taken with the Samsung Omnia 7.

Battery Life
All smart phones need charging each night, that’s a reality of today’s battery technology, so I wasn’t expecting any miracles with the Omnia 7. After around a week’s use, it seems the Omnia 7 has around 1-2 hours less battery life than the iPhone 4. Some of that difference is likely a result of powering a 4” display rather than a 3.5”. Ultimately if under heavy use, it gets you from 8am to around 7pm that’ll be an acceptable battery life for most. Obviously with more casual use, battery will get you through the day no worries. It’s important to remember WP7 was put together reasonably fast and is effectively the first version of an operating system. This means there should be some battery tweaks coming in future updates. To offset those improvements, also remember there’s no background or multi-tasking happening on WP7 yet.

Keyboard
The WP7 on-screen keyboard is comparable to that of the iPhone, I found I could type just as fast after a couple days of practice. There is a difference in how inevitable mistakes are corrected though, WP7 users are given a number of possible corrections to choose from, tapping the right one replaces the highlighted word. This works incredibly well.

Headphones
The headphones included with the Omnia 7 are the in-ear type. While I like that they cancel out a large part of the environmental noise around you, the problem is your movement conducts through the headphones. If your laying down they work great, but if your trying to walk around or workout with them, its really not a great solution. That said the sound quality they produce is great. The headphones also contain the in-line volume and call pickup buttons we’re used to and should expect from smart phones of today. With a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, you can use your favourite headphones, so if your not a fan of the ones that come with, its not really a big issue.

Software

OS version: 7.0.7004.0 | Firmware version: 2424.10.9.13 | Bootloader version: 4.9.2.9

Live tiles
WP7 Live Tiles are a great way to get new information about what’s been going on with your networks. It’s also great at providing small chunks of info at a glance.. like the weather. Other live tiles are mail, calendar, as well as a number of 3rd party apps. To be honest I found myself prioritising apps with live tiles above those without, just so my phone felt more dynamic, so it’d be a good idea if more developers used this feature.

Notifications
WP7 notifications from applications, txt messages and emails come via a notifications bar that slides down from the top of the screen. Unlike iPhone notifications that demand your attention and interrupt what your doing, WP7 allows you to continue your task, then deal with the update when you have time. This is how a notification system should work. Android works in a similar way, making iOS the odd one out.

People
The people tile is unique in that it updates with info of what your contacts are doing online. While it has brief updates from Windows Live and Facebook, this really doesn’t replace the need for a Facebook app. There’s so much more that people do than just status updates, so how useful is the People hub ? I basically use it for my Phonebook and that’s it. While we’re on the issue of long lists, Apple’s A-Z shortcuts on the right hand side of longer lists seems like genius compared to WP7s endless scrolling, maybe I just have too many contacts.

Update
Thanks to jinxOZ for pointing out that tapping on the letter square brings up a-z directory to fast-scroll down the contact list.

Calendar
Works like a calendar should, one nice feature is the ability to open a meeting and hit a single button ‘I’m running late’ to generate an email you can send to attendees. This just makes sense and would like to see this functionality available on all mobile calendaring solutions. Naturally WP7 supports multiple calendars from multiple sources with difference colour to distinguish each calendar. This is another example of WP7 understanding that people have both professional and personal lives all contained within their phone and may wish to access either at any time.

Sounds and Alarms
One of the coolest aspects of Windows Phone 7 is its alarm system. Most of us start our days by waking up to an alarm, so it is actually a really under-rated aspect of the device. WP7 uses a unique series of tones and vibrations that come in waves to wake you up gently rather than the abrupt screeching your probably used too.

As for ringtones and message tones, there’s actually a decent selection to choose from. The Omnia 7 (and Galaxy S) come with ‘Samsung tune’, after experimenting with all the options, I settled back on their default.

Lock screen
What a difference a functional lock screen actually makes to a smart phone, no longer restricted to the bare minimum, this is a real strength of WP7. The iPhone lock screen displays your favourite image with date and time, pretty basic. WP7 uses the lock screen to provide that and so much more. Upcoming meetings or calendar items, new unread email, sms or missed calls all display on the lock screen, so you don’t need to go through the unlock code to know if your phone needs attention every 5 minutes. This could be extended even further with select 3rd party app notifications being able to push to the front page. This would need to be done sparingly and with the consistency of the current notifications, but has massive potential.

Application overload
In testing I attempted to replicate what the phone would be like after a couple of months of use. Typically over time users accumulate applications, some the use daily, some they use once in a while, but still need access to. This brings me to the problem of having a large number of apps installed on the phone. Applications very quickly become a massive long scrolling list that can’t be searched and can’t be put in categories or folders. WP7 needs a solution for this.

Applications
WP7 may have 3000+ apps, but there’s still some important ones that aren’t available. There’s some applications that I use every single day on the iPhone, these are located on the first home screen and have really become must haves for the phone I carry in my pocket.

Office
One of Microsoft’s biggest strengths with the platform, Office integration on WP7 is  without question the best of any mobile platform. It allows for viewing, editing and creation of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents on the go, no matter where business comes calling. Those enterprises running SharePoint will also benefit from running WP7 mobile devices, but unfortunately can only read content from site areas, document libraries or lists. Sadly there is no way to add a new item to a list or contribute a document back to a SharePoint area from the WP7 device. The one nice thing that happens after you define your SharePoint site address is that WP7 picks up your most commonly used sites.

Games (Xbox Live)
Earning achievements on your phone is a great idea and will be a big feature for some users. Personally I haven’t really been engaged by any games on WP7 so far. Lately I’ve been taken by physics based games like Angry Birds, Cut the rope and social turn-by-turn games like Words with friends. Until those titles come to WP7 and can interact with my friends on other platforms, I’m afraid WP7 gaming won’t light my world on fire. I want to be clear, I’m sure some will love gaming on WP7, I just haven’t so far.

Editing your Xbox Avatar is actually a great experience on WP7, even faster than on the Xbox itself.

Samsung apps
Not content with leaving all the software up to Microsoft Samsung have thrown a few devs at WP7 and build a number of apps for the platform. The Omnia 7 comes with dual-tile ‘Now’ app pre-installed. This app provides Weather info, Reuters news and Stocks info, its a solid app, but doesn’t have a Live Tile, due to this it ended up lower on my home screen. Remember this is removable like every other tile on WP7, completely customisable.

Samsung even get their own section of the Marketplace called ‘Samsung Zone’. Right now it only has 4 apps, one of those being ‘Now’ that I just discussed. Not sure how active development will be, but lets hope it moves forward based on user feedback like all good companies should.

Marketplace – Try before you buy
A great option unique to WP7 is the ability to try applications before you buy them. Trial versions come with limited functionality, this can include watermarks on created content, a subset of available levels, or even a time period before your required to pony up the cash for the full version. One RSS reader I tried had a unique take on the limitations, it didn’t save your login credentials, this meant every time you launched the app, you had to login, brilliant! Just enough of an annoyance that you would buy it, but easy enough to try out. Trials really do come in handy, especially with higher priced apps you would otherwise not have bothered with. Only problem is that not all applications offer trial versions, admittedly most do, just not all.

App Updates
Application updates can only be done from the device.. go figure. After having a couple of updates not finishing successfully, my updates available was stuck at 3. I decided to do the typical work around I’m used to with the iPhone of connecting it to the desktop, doing the app update there and syncing across. After connecting the WP7 device, I was informed I needed to disconnect the USB cable to do updates – ridiculous.

Mail
Support for all the major mail platforms is there, with an obvious tie in with Windows Live Hotmail. If you did what Microsoft suggests and imports your other mail accounts into Hotmail, the mail isn’t immediately accessible through the Mail app. You need to enter folders, then select the appropriate one. This needs to change. If you go to the unread view (most of the time I’m entering the app its to read unread, this should be the default), it should show all unread messages, regardless of which account.

Now if you have defined each account individually you’ll end up with a mail icon for each. This compared to Apple’s unified inbox just seems ridiculous, particularly for those of us with accounts on pretty much every provider. Another issue I found is that HTML email requires you to press ‘download images’ each time, with no setting to load them by default, this gets old fast.

Audiobooks
Currently WP7 doesn’t support audiobooks in the Zune app, this means you’ll need to resort to 3rd party apps. For some reason Microsoft have decided it’d be a good idea to allow audiobooks to be their own applications. Rather than use the eReader model of separating reader and content, the marketplace contains a number of applications that contain a single audiobook, meaning your downloading a new app for every audiobook you want to listen to. This is ridiculous for a couple of reasons, the first is that it pollutes the marketplace and the second is it needlessly fills up your application list.

This should be integrated into the Zune app, just as music, podcasts and radio are. Due to WP7’s current lack of multitasking, it means you cannot do anything else on the phone while listening to the audiobook, because you need the app to be running. Worse yet is that if you exit out, then your place is not saved, so relaunching the app starts you from the beginning.. this is seriously broken.

From all the things that were influenced (read: copied) from the iPhone, this unfortunately wasn’t one of them. It should have been.

Zune desktop software
In short, this software is severely lacking in Australia. Locked out of Music, Podcasts and frankly most of the things that make it great, Australians are lefts with a crippled Zune that allows for purchasing videos and that’s pretty much it. Of course you can define local content directories, but if you have to fire up iTunes to buy music, you’ve failed. This is an area Microsoft needs to focus a lot of resources on, getting local content deals done in countries world-wide and compete head-to-head with Apple. Few companies are capable of doing this, Microsoft should be one of them. Right now the experience is just broken for consumers and that’s before we discuss the lack of Zune Pass, arguably Zune’s greatest play. Subscription music is a domain untouched by Apple (for now), bring it here now Microsoft, we’re ready, hesitate and Apple may get our monthly.

For those that have seen the US version, it’s absurd that you can’t create your own playlist of podcasts, nor can you view all unplayed podcast episodes. Add in the lack of audiobooks and its really got some work to go. The sad part is, Zune has so much promise and could be great, unfortunately it is far to hamstrung in Australia to be very useful.

Zune on WP7
Naturally there’s playback for Music, Video and Podcasts, but a unique feature of WP7 over the iPhone is that it contains traditional Radio. This isn’t the new fancy digital radio or even internet radio, instead the regular old school type. This means to get reception you need to have headphone connected to act as your antenna. Quality was average at best, if you in a car, use your car stereo, if your at home use your home theatre, this is really only for when you get desperate.

Voice commands
Voice commands work well on the phone, but don’t support simple things like ‘Play songs by [Artist Name]’. Voice is simply for voice dialling or opening you calendar. I also tried ‘Open Mail’ and to my surprise it somehow picked Google Mail to open rather than Hotmail. Although limited, the accuracy of Voice commands on WP7 seem are pretty accurate.

Gallery

The Verdict
Windows Phone 7 right now is a reasonable competitor in the smart phone market and deserves to be considered. If you do decide to buy a WP7 device, what your really buying a more of a promise of great things to come in the future. I discussed applications at length above and Microsoft have done a great job of getting some A-list developers on board, they just need more second and third tier developers to build for WP7 as well. There was a significant milestone Apple reached and its hard to say what number of apps it was that achieved it. When you think of a use for your phone, search for an app and can download one that allows you to perform a task you previously couldn’t, it’s a transformative user experience.

One key area that Microsoft are getting beaten right now is on fast app switching. The iPhone allows application states to be saved on exit, so when the user returns to a previously open app, it picks up where you left it. This was enabled at an OS level, but has to be support by each application. Over past couple of revisions, we’re seeing a lot of apps now supporting it and for good reason. This single item dramatically affects the perception of the device’s speed. Having to restart every app is painful and pretty inefficient. In my mind, this should be priority number one for Microsoft and Windows Phone 7.1.

Microsoft have announced that copy+paste is on its way, current rumours suggest early January. Also as a reviewer, the lack of a screenshot function made it very difficult to get great images of the UI. Still hope you enjoy the 140+ photo image gallery.

The Samsung Omnia 7 is available exclusively from Optus.