Our regular readers probably still remember that a while ago we have been presenting two Samsung protoypes to our readers in two blog series. You have shown great interest in the detailed presentation of i900 Omnia, as through us our readers could have seen the process through which a prototype handset becomes a final one. The presentation of i8510 (codenamed Innov8) had only five posts, due to the shorter term, but the success has been similar. Thanks to these I am happy to announce that today we are launching our blog series of Samsung i8910, previously known as Omnia HD!
The success of Omnia has shown that there is a demand for smartphones with a large touchscreen and iPhone is not the only one. Samsung tries to satisfy these needs with their new smartphone, i8910, which has previously been called Omnia HD, but in fact it has nothing to do with the original Omnia, as it doesn't have Windows Mobile, but Symbian S60 Touch, just like Nokia 5800 or Sony Ericsson Idou.
What is AMOLED?
OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode, which is a possible direction in the future of display manufacturing. The technology, just like many others, is derived from nature. Fireflies emit a strong light before mating, and scientists have discovered that some organic materials emit light when voltage is applied on them - the phenomenon is called electro-luminescence. Its based on the principle that in an electric field carriers (electrons and basic ions) exiting from electrodes approach each other inside the organic material. The electric force field forces electrons inside the electron carrier layer to the lowest unoccupied molecular path, while basic ions (the "holes") are forced to the highest occupied molecular path inside the hole carrier layer. On the organic material's border surface, carriers, getting close to each other from the energy's point of view, "recombine" and due to the discharging energy they get in a neutral, excited state (just like the fireflies). The excited particle state decays in the electro-luminescent materials and meanwhile a photon (the unit of light) is created - this process happens a couple of million times per second, which creates a serious amount of light.
From the light-emitting material's and the method of manufacturing, there are two kinds of OLED techonology. One of them uses "small" molecules, while the other uses plymers as a light-emitting material. The layers that make up the OLED are applied on the carrier glass with vacuum steaming in the first case and with a methos similar to bubble jet printers in the second case. In both cases the transparent anode is the same Indium-Tin Oxide (ITO), then comes the holw creator and carrier layer then the organic emitting material (small molecule or polymer layer), and finally the electron creator and carrier layer with the metallic catodes on it (this is frequently a single layer). Of course this won't produce a picture, we'll need the pixel-matrix drive and control provided by OLEDs. The two known methods are the passive (PMOLED) and the active (AMOLED). In case of screens displaying a moving picture, the active matrix control is the better solution, in which case there is a switch transistor and storage capacity assigned to every pixel. The solution is provied byt the poly-silicon thin film transistors (TFT) used at LCD displays, which provide a high powered and fast switching. On the active matrix OLED display all pixels can be separately addressed with the assigned TFT and capacity. Theoretically all selected pixels canbe kept turned on during the whole image refresh process.
There are many arguments for OLED displays. They have a very low power consumption, they are small and have an insignificant weight, their size is defined only by the carrier glass or plastic plate. Their brightness can be very high - up to 500 cd/m2 - and OLED displays have a huge view angle, they can be clearly read from 160 degrees.
Let's start with the pure facts. The handset, planned to be launched in a couple of months, has the latest Symbian Series 60 Touch user interface, its CPU is a 600 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 with hardware 3D acceleration, which provides DivX and XviD movie playback straight on i8910. The display has a diagonal of 3.7", a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels, uses AMOLED techonology, it's touch-sensitive and it's also capacitive. We have brought up the AMOLED techonology at Samsung i7110, and we here at MobileArsenal all think that this is the de facto technology of the future, as these displays have a much better image quality and higher resolution than current TFT panels, they also have a much lower power consumption - see our information block on the right. Besides these i8910 has advanced data transfer capabilities as well, it supports 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA, and it also has WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS.
We won't be complaining about the multimedia features either, as the phone can record HD resolution (720p@24 fps or 720 x 480 pixels @ 30 fps) videos with its 8 megapixel camera, which uses the 8 or 16 GB internal memory for storing the videos. I have already mentioned DivX and XviD playback support, but the handset also sports a 3.5 mm headset jack and a standard microUSB connector. Another great thing that the handset has an FM transmitter too, besides the FM radio. If this is still not enough, additional features are the gyroscope and the light sensor.
Of course all these features have their price, the size of the handset is 123 x 58 x 12.9 mm, while its weight is 144 grams. It is slim enough, but it still has the impression of a huge device, even though this usually won't trouble feature-hungry users. The assembly quality is good, even though there are no metal parts on the handset - these would have probably further increased the already large weight. The case is made of shiny, fingerprint-magnet plastics, there are no gaps, so it's great to hold i8910 in our hands, although a metallic device is better from this point of view.
That's all we had for our first blog post, tomorrow we're coming with dozens of test pictures and a large test video, until then feast your eyes on a couple of pictures of the new phone.
Blog posts so far:
Part one (photography, camera)
Part two (software, applications)
Part three (launch date, pricing)
Translated by Szaszati
