I got to play for quite a long time with the Samsung Omnia, the iPhone-Killer wannabe with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, here at IFA 2008. The verdict: it's not an iPhone killer, despite previous demos. In fact, it sucks. It has a poor interface, poor response time, buggy software, and it felt cheap and fat on my hand. I even thought that I was being even more thick than usual while trying it, but I got the Omnia expert lady to give it a marketdrone spin for me and her last sentence summarized it all: "Oh, naw it'z not verking at all. I think I haf too many tasks open. Sorry."
The Good: It has Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, if that's your thing.
The Bad: All the rest. It felt slow and buggy. I found the stuttering interface particularly bad. The side bar widgets, which need to be dragged and dropped onto the screen to make them appear as tiny little programs, is an atrocious, gimmicky interface design. Wastes space and requires a motion that is simply not needed. Samsung designers should learn that a telephone is not a desktop computer, and replicating the Mac OS X Dashboard doesn't work in a tiny screen at all.
Bottom line: After 45 minutes poking and getting frustrated by it, my verdict is to avoid it like the pest. As a consumer, my first impression is clearly one of horror and frustration. I would rather get an HTC. Or a Sony. Or a Nokia.
Always a microcosm of the greater world, the App Store this week focused on two things us Americans have been thinking about a lot recently—the upcoming election, and tossing back a few this Labor Day weekend. And with this week's apps, there's no reason for your iPhone to be left out.
The Gadget: Sony Eriscsson's TM506 is the first phone to be sold by T-Mobile that supports its 
And here's the kicker—at the moment, this thing is lightning fast. I tested it in several locations in NYC, one of T-Mobile's first 3G cities, and we're talking near Wi-Fi speeds on T-Mobile's 1700/2100 MHz HSDPA network. I got a crazy average of 5037kbps using DSL Reports' 
Scratch one more notch for Apple design influence, because next year's top-of-the-range Samsung Ultrathin All-In-One 1 looks like an oversized iPhone 3Gs, down to the finish in black or white. The 52-inch TV—which is 1-inch at its thickest point—includes all the circuitry and ports in its ultra-slim body, with no breakout boxes or hunchbacks. The result is the slickest TV we have seen in the whole of IFA 2008, beating the 
The other day I walked into a coffee shop where I witnessed a man—a grown man—hunched over a tiny laptop. He wiggled with cautious, uncertain movements like a fat guy squeezing his way into an old pair of pants. His hands, too wide for the keyboard, made him look clutsy and a bit stupid. His face, in almost erotic proximity to the tiny screen, squinted to either see more clearly or repress the eyestrain. And to top off this scene of sleek convenience, a long, mismatching wire complete with power brick connected the computer to a nearby outlet. After all, such a small machine could never be expected to run off battery power alone!
Just because I’m a fat American doesn’t mean I’ve always wanted a fat American computer. Over the years I have grown to hate so-called performance laptops from Dell and HP. They were big, ugly and heavy enough to rip your shoulder out of your socket, and getting bigger, uglier and heavier all the time. Why didn’t we get those little laptops, you know, the ones made for Japan and available only on Dynamism? Like the lady who buys shoes a few sizes too small, I sought a computer that could be used for emails and surfing and not require steroid supplements to transport. Oh, and could it be cheap, too? I spend all my money on fast food.