[Starlson]

I've been using the Omnia 2 for about 1 month now after about 4 years on the BlackBerry. I'm far from an expert, but I've found some useful information in these types of forums. Some of my experiences:

- immediately out of the box, it crashed several times a day in the first few days. I turned off touchwiz and installed SPB Mobile Shell, and things improved drastically. I don't think I've had to remove the battery for a couple weeks now. I also installed SKTools and played around with it which seems to have helped a bit.

- I linked in 4 or 5 email accounts and set them to check for mail every few minutes. This killed my battery (which I didn't consider coming from a BlackBerry). I changed all my internet emails to check every few hours and now don't even lose half my battery during the day. My work email connects nicely through Outlook E-Mail which seems to push the emails through instantly, so that is the most important one anyway.

- The customizability is fantastic, particularly the home screens, and it's nice to be able to update the software as new versions come out. The I-Phone is slick, but I can't stand having only one button to press.

- The apps are currently lacking in number and quality. I'm assuming & hoping that this will change. They also tend to be on the pricy side compared to I-Phone apps.

- The touchscreen keyboard is much slower than a BlackBerry keypad. The USA Omnias seem to come with Swype software, but the Canadian versions don't. I've purchased and installed SlideIt which is similar to Swype, which makes typing things much nicer.

- The motion / landscape sensor seems a bit slow and tends to work when it wants to. I found a forum that told me how to manually rotate the screen which I assigned to one of the buttons. It will rotate any program (which isn't always a good thing).

- I'm still searching / waiting for a decent internet browser. I've tried Opera 9 & 10 (beta) as well as SkyFire (1.1), but I find myself going back to Internet Explorer Mobile which seems to be the most reliable / comfortable.

- My initial attempts to watch YouTube were disappointing (very poor quality), but I've heard there is a YouTube application somewhere that I'm intending to try to find.

- One of the key features for me was the 5 MP camera, but I haven't been able to take a clear picture unless the camera and the subject are perfectly still. There are quite a few settings, so if I knew more about cameras, there might be something I could do to improve this.

- I tried to install a program called "Zoomer" to allow pinch zooming, but it didn't seem to work. Still, most programs seem to have a reasonably simple zoom feature.

- The Wi-Fi seems to drain the batteries a bit quicker and is not much faster than 3G, so I would recommend only using it for heavy downloading while plugged in (depending on your data plan). The Bluetooth seems to work fine with the wireless in my car, and I can generally leave it on all day without much impact on my battery (the battery is obviously better when it is turned off, but I find it inconvenient to remember to turn it on and off when I use the car).

Overall, after a month of tweaking (and close to $100 in additional software), I'm finally reasonably happy with it. I'm still looking for a magic stash of apps and games as well as a better browser, but I now prefer it to my wife's I-Phone.