Samsung's original Omnia arrived amidst much hype a year or so ago offering an impressive features list but let itself down badly with an awkward user interface and general lack of usability. The Omnia II on the other hand has polished up the UI and has a much improved operating system in the shape of Windows 6.5.

Handset

The Omnia II is a little bigger than its predecessor at 118mm x 16mm x 12mm and 130g and has a slightly bigger screen too at 3.7in – the largest OLED screen we've seen so far. It feels fairly lightweight, due in part to the Samsung's trademark thin plastic casing. Beneath the screen are call stop and start buttons on either side of a stylised cube button (a hexagon really) which takes you to the menu, which can be populated with whatever icons you wish and viewed as a list or as Samsung's TouchWiz spinning cube. A long press also takes you to the task manager.

On the sides are a volume rocker, plus camera and back buttons, as well as a screen lock button. Unlocking the screen is actually a two-stage process, since you first need to press the button, then swipe the screen, which not everyone will feel is strictly necessary. On top are the power/sync micro USB slot and 3.5mm headphone jack, while the back features the 5 megapixel camera lens and dual LED flash.

Screen

The screen in an impressively bright and sharp OLED model but while it looks terrific, it's resistive, rather than capacitive, so it's never going to be as sensitive or user-friendly as best-in-class models like the iPhone or HTC's HD2. It's pretty good though, generally identifying the difference between our brushes and strokes though it occasionally requires a double tap before taking action. Tapping buttons or keyboard keys at the edge of the screen in particular tends to require special care.

Interface and operating system

It's running the latest Windows 6.5 operating system, which is proving to be a mighty step up from previous versions. Though it comes with one of those awkward styluses designed to hang from the phone by a lanyard (whoever thought that was a good idea?) we never had reason to use it. The icon-led menus are all laid out in big, thumb-friendly style which you can configure how you like and even deep into the settings lists, all is easily accessible with a fingertip. The integration with Samsung's improved TouchWiz user interface has been well handled too, with elements available as an option rather than a requirement.

There are three home screens which you can populate with TouchWiz's widgets for calendar, clock, music player etc, as well as Internet services like Facebook, YouTube and Google, which are handy (though it's a shame the YouTube widget turns out to simply provide a link to the website, rather than a dedicated video player). There's even a widget for downloading new widgets from the Internet, but you can only use each widget once, so you can't double them up on each screen.
Windows 6.5 also means you have access to additional apps via Windows Marketplace, which is filling up nicely, and there's also Samsung's Application Store, which offers a little over 200 more app opportunities, many of them for free.

Browser

Internet access is nice and fast thanks to the Omnia II's HSDPA network connection or broadband via WiFi. The onboard accelerometer flips the screen quickly into landscape mode when you turn it on its side and fortunately, Opera is the default browser, though Internet Explorer is also available.

Zooming isn't as intuitive as the iPhone's multi-touch pinching action, but you can double tap for quick zoom or press and hold the screen for more sensitive increments. There's support for Flash video and a host of settings such as blocking pop-ups and cache size management, which all helps to speed up the browsing process.

Camera

The 5-megapixel camera is quick to launch (less than three seconds) following a press on the side-mounted shutter button and takes its snaps in a little under two seconds, which means it's better than most autofocus camphones for speed. Maximum resolution is 2560 x 1920 pixels and there's a decent range of photo options includes macro, smile and face detection, as well as a panorama mode that's one of the best we've seen – rotate the camera and it will automatically line up and snap eight pictures and stitch them together virtually seamlessly.

General photo quality is good for a 5-megapixel snapper. Edges tend to be fairly sharp though colours could sometimes seem a little less than vibrant. There are also options for uploading pics directly to your blog and for geo-tagging using the phone's onboard GPS.

Media

Films look great on the bright and fast OLED screen and the media player is nicely intuitive to use. It can handle MPEG4, WMV, H.263, H.264, DivX and XviD files and there are a couple of audio options for video, including 'Wow HD', which sounds grand, but in practice didn't seem to do much more than boost the volume. Incidentally, the 800MHz processor never seemed to have any problem with playback, even when we had several apps running at once.

The music player can play MP3, AAC, AAC+ and WMA files and sound quality is pretty good through the supplied headphones, with a clear, transparent midband and a decent dollop of bass. There's a graphic equaliser with a dozen presets and an FM radio with autoscan and room for six preset stations too.

There's 2GB of memory onboard but you can add more via microSD card, which is under the back plate, though fortunately you don't have to remove the battery to get to it.

Battery

The battery life is reasonable on the Omnia II, with Samsung promising an extra couple of hours talk time on the original Omnia, which translated to around a day and a half of fairly intense use.

Samsung's Omnia II is considerably better than its predecessor, with a hefty raft of functions and media playing capabilities, notably its excellent OLED screen. The Windows Mobile 6.5 OS is well integrated with Samsung's TouchWiz UI and browser, camera and messaging capabilities are all very good. We'd have preferred the sensitivity of a capacitive rather than a resistive screen, but otherwise it's a great little smartphone package.