QWERTY is pretty much the king of smartphone text input. But there’s a new challenger on the horizon. It’s called Swype, it works with one-hand input and, yeah, it is pretty fast.

Yes, the first thing you may notice is that Swype technically uses a QWERTY layout. But instead of pushing each key individually, you drag your finger from letter to letter.

It’s tough to tell if the speed gains are legitimate, given this video has been created by the Swype camp. I will say, however, given that this demo is one hand vs two, the technology certainly holds its own. What do you think? Would you be willing to part with traditional QWERTY to spell words through nonsensical doodles?

Swype will debut in Verizon’s Samsung Omnia II arriving early next month before making its way to an unnamed Android phone next year. [Swype via TechCrunch via http://www.ohgizmo.com/2009/11/24/verizons-samsung-omnia-ii-to-be-first-to-sport-swype-text-input/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ohgizmo+%28OhGizmo!%29]

As we noted when we first saw the ai.rs video below, the TouchWiz 2.0 UI looks nice, but the resistive touch lag is a shame given the 800Mhz processor. Still, there you have it. Engadget’s tipster says the phone will hit telesales, online and retail stores on December 2. [Samsung via Engadget]

Omnia II (I8000) Specification

Network: HSDPA 7.2 Mbps / HSUPA 5.76Mbps
EDGE/GPRS 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900MHz
UMTS 900 / 1900 / 2100MHz
Display: 65K WVGA AMOLED Display (3.7″, 480 x 800)
Advanced R-type Touch Screen
OS: Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
Camera: 5 Megapixel CMOS / Auto-Focus /
Dual Power LED / Face Detection / Smile Shot
Mobile Blogging / Geo Tagging / Photo Editor
Audio: Audio Format Support (MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA)
WMDRM, OMA DRM 2.1 / Find Music (Music Recognition)
Bluetooth® Stereo Headset (A2DP)
FM Radio with RDS / 3.5 earjack
Video: Video Format Support (DivX, XviD, H.263,
H.264, WMV9, MPEG4)
Video Recording & Playing (30fps@ D1(720×480))
Video Editing (Trim video, Audio dubbing,
Live dubbing, Add subtitle)
Value Added: A-GPS with Navigation (3D Map) / LBS
TouchWiz 2.0 UI with Mobile Widget / 3D Media Gate
Multi-task manager / 3D Interactive Games
Connectivity:Bluetooth® v 2.0 / USB 2.0 / Wi-Fi
Memory: Internal Memory : 2GB/8GB/16GB
External Memory : microSDHC™ (up to 32GB)
Size: 118 x 60 x 11.9 mm
Battery: Talk time : Up to 10 hours (3G)
Standby time : Up to 430 hours (3G)

That applies to the upcoming OmniaLITE (B7300), and current WinMo 6.1 models: Omnia II (I8000), OmniaPRO B7610 and B7320. These three “will be updateable to Windows Mobile 6.5 upon the update availability”.

The Windows Markplace (Microsoft’s app store for all 6.x Windows phones) also arrives on October 6. We’ll keep you posted on the lead up. [KoreaNewsWire]

The store will initially arrive in the UK, France and Italy on September 14. A further 30 European countries will follow, and though Samsung confirmed plans for the Americas and Asia, it hasn’t mentioned any dates.

You’ll also need to have an Omnia or i8910 HD phone, but support is expected to soon also include handsets like the Omnia II and OmniaLITE.

Every man and his dog is doing an app store these days:
• Apple iPhone App Store
• Android App Market
• BlackBerry App World
• Windows mobile Marketplace
• Nokia Ovi Store
• Palm App Catalog
• LG App Store (Asia/Pacific only)

For a good primer on how all these competing options (except LG) compare, check out Giz Explains: All The Smartphone Mobile App Stores [Wall Street Journal]

The Price: TBD, at least as far as subsidised carrier deals go.

The Verdict: The Omnia HD does everything fine, and a few things extremely well. Video playback is top notch and widely compatible, the camera is among the best I’ve ever seen on a mobile phone, and the video recording can actually hang with a lot of pocket cams, like the Flip of Kodak Zi series. On all other counts the phone never falls flat, but it never really shines, either.

The hardware: Your first impression of the Omnia HD is that it’s big, but that’s not really fair: It’s a tall device, but it’s not meaningfully larger than any of the other popular touchscreen phones on the market today—it’s just proportioned differently. And for all the hardware crammed inside, it’s reasonably thin. Speaking of which, the guts: It’s got HSDPA (on European bands), GPS, 8-16GB of internal storage with microSD expansion, and 8MP, 720p-recording camera sensor, a built-in flash bulb, a forward-facing video camera, USB connector and a 3.5mm jack. It’s a healthy phone, hardware-wise.

Samsung touts the AMOLED screen over anything else, and with some good reason. It’s vibrant and sharp, but side by side with an iPod Touch, it isn’t strikingly better. The benefits of the OLED, such as they are, seem to manifest themselves more in a healthy battery life than anything else. In terms of touch, it’s a capacitive panel, and it’s extremely responsive. Any lag or difficulties with the onscreen keyboard are entirely down to the software.

Mobile Phone cameras are generally horrible, so the Omnia HD’s camera is a rare treat. Seriously: I trusted it to shoot a <a href=”I even trusted it to shoot this Klipsch Image S4i review last week. “>product review last week, and it definitely came through. It’ll match a low-end point-and-shoot in most situations, barring low-light—the sensor can’t really handle darker situations too well, and the flash is pretty wimpy—and fast-motion scenes. Video, on the other hand, is at least pocket-cam quality. In daylight it’s razor-sharp at 720p, while in low light it’s passable. It doesn’t quite match up to the best-of-the-bunch Zi8, for example, but it’s surprisingly close. On a mobile! When did this happen?

The Software: This is where things fall apart a little. Wherever the Omnia HD hardware shines—along with the kickass camera, it can handle HD video playback in plenty of codecs—the software is fine. The camera interface and media playback interfaces, music and video, are never distracting a usually do what you expect. Elsewhere, though, there are problems.

Samsung’s thrown the old Omnia’s TouchWiz widget UI, originally designed for Windows Mobile, onto the Symbian-powered HD. This in itself is fine, since TouchWiz has always been a decent, finger-friendly homescreen. Outside of the three homescreen panels, though, is a bizarre UI stew, some from Symbian 5.0, some from Samsung, and some from the deepest bowels of hell. For example: Scrolling! Instead of throwing menus and selecting entries, the selection follows your finger. It’ hard to explain, but it’s a terrible way to manage a menu-heavy operating system. The onscreen keyboard seems to be a Samsung special too. It’s fine—it’s spacious and rarely lags—but it’s set on a perfect grid, doesn’t come with any autocorrect and feels like it was designed in about an hour.

Outside of a few areas, the phone is a fairly raw take on Symbian, which means the UI is inconsistent and difficult to tackle with fingers, and seems to insert needless steps all over the place. Want to enter a URL? Press a button, type your address, press another button, and press another. It doesn’t make any sense. Functionally, though, it holds up fine: The browser could be easier to navigate with, but renders with WebKit, supports Flash and generally does its job. Same goes for pretty much everything else: the experience could be smoother, but you’d be hard pressed to find a task that the HD can’t handle. And if you do find a gap, remember: This is full Symbian, so you can always go app hunting. As dumb as the UI can be, don’t be fooled into thinking this is a dumbphone: it can do pretty much anything an Android or Windows Mobile phone can, just a little more awkwardly. [Samsung]

There are five new touchscreen phones as part of the Icon range. The Android powered Galaxy, the HD running Symbian, the new Omnia on Windows Mobile, as well at the Jet and Preston running a Samsung OS.

I had a bit of a play with each of them yesterday at the media launch, and they’re all really attractive phones. The fact that most of them include a 3.5mm headphone jack is a long-awaited relief, while the AMOLED screens all look pretty damn amazing.

In my opinion, the Galaxy Icon was definitely the most interesting of the five showcased, mostly because of its Android UI. It’s a very basic version of Android – there aren’t any software skins or special custom apps preloaded on this, which means it’s probably not as versatile as the upcoming HTC Hero, but it’s still a solid entry into the platform for Samsung. It’s got an RRP of $749 and will be available through Optus, Vodafone, Virgin and Crazy John’s, so it’s got a fairly wide reach.

The Omnia Icon – running Windows Mobile 6.1 – has a custom skin over the top to try and hide the platform a bit. It helps a little, but was nowhere near as intuitive as some of the other phones on offer here.

The Jet Icon, also has a lot of potential, but it won’t launch until October, unlike the other phones unveiled yesterday, which all land in September.

The HD Icon is pretty notable for recording 720p video at 24fps, as well as playing back DivX and having DLNA compatibility.

The Preston was (in my opinion, at least) the runt of the litter and despite being a pretty good looking phone, didn’t offer as much to make it stand out from the crowd. Except for an odd choice of name, perhaps…

What do you guys think? Any of these float your boat?

[Samsung]

The Omnia isn’t running the game, of course. Instead, its being processed remotely and streamed via OTOY, an upcoming server-side rendering service that’ll let you play high-end 3D games on low-powered machines.

In this video, Crysis is being played through the Omnia’s browser with no additional plug-ins and is being controlled wirelessly with an Xbox 360 controller.

It’ll be interesting to see how many people take advantage of this when it officially launches. [TechCrunch]

Hello totally unconfirmed Samsung Omnia Pro phone. Good evening. Let’s say you are real, and more than ethereal rumour, and might actually take up physical space someday. You would probably have features like this:

- Windows Mobile 6.1, with upgrade to 6.5 available
– Full sliding QWERTY keyboard
– 3.5-inch WVGA touch screen
– AMOLED display
– 5 megapixel camera

And since this is a completely unconfirmed rumour, let’s say you can also spontaneously create the world’s biggest Cheeto on command. [hdblog.it via Slashphone]

Actually, Samsung says the reason for the name change is for practical purposes:

To avoid confusion between the original Omnia, which is Windows Mobile, and OmniaHD, which is Symbian, Samsung is deferring to the model number.

That means any Omnia phones you’ll see in the future will be probably WinMo. Well, OmniOUS would be a good name for the Omnia brand if they don’t start rolling out some WinMo 6.5 devices soon. [MobileCrunch]

Samsung’s slogan here in Barcelona is “The Power of Touch.” It should have been “The Power to Drive You Freakin’ Bonkers” because their touch technology continues to be bad bad bad. BAD.

What’s wrong with these guys? Last year I tried the Omnia at IFA 2008, and said it had “a poorly designed interface, lousy response time, buggy software, and it felt cheap and fat on my hand.” The Samsung mobile phones at the Mobile World Congress this year don’t feel cheap and fat, but the touch interface is equally as bad. It wasn’t just me. It was me trying, people around me trying, and booth people trying them for me.

In theory, the mobile phones available to the public in a tech fair booth must be flawless, right? After all, everyone—visitors, partners, and press—will be trying them to get an impression on how they work. So, how these “touch” screens’ response could be so bad, often requiring multiple clicks to get the most basic click operation done? Is it the hardware? Is it the software? Is it bad luck? I don’t know, but it left me the same impression as last year hands on, which is just too bad because the mobile phones have some other great qualities, specially the Omnia HD amazing AMOLED high resolution screen.