Samsung Omnia II coming to Verizon in early December

It appears that the Samsung Omnia II will be coming to Verizon in early December. The Omnia II will be similar to the HTC Imagio. No slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Touch screen and Windows Mobile just like many other smartphones. So what will make the Omnia II unique? The AM-OLED display and the TouchWiz user interface.

The Omnia II will be a significant improvement over the original Samsung Omnia. You'll get a larger screen and some really nice feature improvements. Would it justify an upgrade if you're currently using the Omnia? I suppose the answer really depends on your budget and on how you're currently using your smartphone. If you really want Windows Mobile 6.5 on your Omnia, then you can load a custom ROM (as long as you know what you're doing). If you want a larger screen, then you'll need to upgrade to the Omnia II (or an HTC Imagio or Touch Pro2 if you want to stay with Windows Mobile).

It's great to see that Verizon is finally bolstering its smartphone selection.

Samsung Omnia Pro or B7610 Louvre

If you're a Windows Mobile user on the Verizon Wireless network and you happen to like sliders, then you're probably going to love the new Samsung Omnia Pro (aka, B7610 Louvre). This phone runs Windows Mobile 6.1 and will be upgradable to Windows Mobile 6.5. You'll also get a slide-out full QWERTY thumbboard, a 3.5-inch AMOLED touchscreen with WVGA resolution (800 by 480 pixels), a 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, and 1GB of internal memory. I think this is going to beat out the HTC Touch Pro, but I don't know how it compares to the newer HTC Touch Pro2.

AMOLED = active-matrix organic light-emitting diode
We don't see many phones using OLED screens, but maybe this trend will change with the next generation of smartphones.