After a lot of research and careful thought, I think I'm gonna go with the Touch Pro 2 next month instead of the Omnia 2. And that decision comes from weighing the 2 things that I want most from my phone: Ease of typing, and custom ROMs that remove all the carrier RAM-hogging garbage.
Once upon a time I wanted the Omnia 2 more than anything. But after a year of typing on the Omnia's cramped 3.2-inch screen, I don't think I could ever get a phone without a physical keyboard again. Sure the O2's screen is larger giving you more room to make less typing errors, but I also have an ipod touch with a 3.7-inch screen and a spacious keyboard (same as the O2) and I still mis-type on that thing all the time. And I'm not really a fan of Swype.
And the second reason I'm ditching Samsung for now is because, quite frankly, HTC phones have a much larger support group with endless ROMs to choose from via PPCG and XDA. Don't get me wrong, guys like Adrynalyne, Blazingwolf, et. al,. did the best they could with what they had to work with when cooking ROMs... but the Omnia's kitchen was like going to a junkyard and taking pieces from a bunch of different cars and putting them together to make your own car that worked, but wasn't very pretty and required lots of tweaking. As such, our hard-working chefs could never give us ROMs that were as good as the HTC ones.
Add that to the fact that HTC ROMs also have a HardSPL unlock (which cracks into and unlocks both the csc and radio of the phone), something that we Samsung users will likely never see. Plus, the HTC ROM platform is also virtually "brick-proof" And as others in this thread have said, it'll likely be a while before the O2 ever has a custom ROM.
All that being said, I don't say this to discourage Omnia 2 owners/seekers. You guys have chosen a really good phone that comes right out of the box with WinMo 6.5. And let's face it, WinMo is still better than Andriod when it comes to custom ROMs and tweakability. But I need the custom ROM fix and physical keyboard that the Touch Pro 2 currently has to offer.
I loved my Omnia. It's was the best phone I've ever owned. And guys like Adryn and Bwolf made it that much better. We all owe them a sincere amount of thanks for their countless hours of dedication. But for me, it's off to greener pastures. I'll see you guys on the other side
