December 1 - 10:05am EST   Verizon on Monday has already dropped the price on the Samsung Omnia less than a week after its introduction. Originally priced at $250 with a contract and a $70 rebate, the device will now cost $200 with the same discount and now almost matches the pricing of both the BlackBerry Storm as well as the iPhone 3G, which has an inferior two-megapixel camera but shares a similar 8GB of built-in storage, 3G, GPS and Wi-Fi. [full story]

November 25 - 9:40am EST   Verizon on Tuesday became the first American carrier to offer the Samsung Omnia. The company's second full touchscreen smartphone in as many weeks, the Americanized edition of the Omnia adds a new, customized version of Samsung's TouchWiz interface to Windows Mobile 6.1 that lets users quickly check informational widgets and change core settings without leaving the home screen. It also brings VZ Navigator as an option for the phone's native GPS and the VZAppZone as a portal for downloading third-party native apps. [full story]

November 6 - 3:45pm EST   A Thursday report confirms several Samsung handsets will soon be shipping to various wireless providers, including the long-awaited Omnia i910 smartphone coming to Verizon. Along with the Saga i770, it will use Windows Mobile 6.1 as its operating system, with a Renown U810 flip phone also joining the Verizon offerings. The Omnia should share the GSM original's five-megapixel camera, GPS and Wi-Fi but may not have the T*Omnia's higher-resolution display. [full story]

November 5 - 7:45am EST   Samsung has only just introduced the T*Omnia in its home country but may already be enroute to the US within a matter of weeks, a claim from BusinessWeek. The company is reportedly in talks to bring the Windows Mobile touchscreen phone with an unspecified US carrier by the end of November, though whether it represents the fully-upgraded T*Omnia or its lower-resolution, lower-capacity ancestor is unknown. [full story]

November 3 - 10:20am EST   Samsung today stepped up the quality of its flagship smartphone with the launch of the T*Omnia. A major upgrade to the original model released just in mid-year, the new version carries a slightly larger 3.3-inch LCD but with a much higher 800x480 resolution versus the earlier 400x200. The extra resolution helps both with Windows Mobile as well as with a new DMB TV tuner that gives it over-the-air digital TV in its native Korea. The size has increased slightly to fit the new display and hardware. [full story]

October 23 - 11:20am EDT   Phones using Samsung's full-screen TouchWiz interface will finally reach the US in an official capacity soon, the company acknowledged today. Where the interface was previously available on Asia- and Europe-only devices like the Omnia and F480, the company now plans to introduce "several" devices to the US between late 2008 and early 2009 that carry the touchscreen software. The platform centers around a widget tray that can be customized with shortcuts to complete apps like a browser or media player as well as small, quick features like clocks. [full story]

October 15 - 12:45pm EDT   Samsung's Omnia smartphone, considered to be one of many rivals to the Apple iPhone, may arrive in the United States by mid-November, a leak suggests. A purported rebate document shows a $70 discount applying between October 14th and November 15th, even though no formal release date has been announced. Although the entry could be outdated or otherwise inaccurate, it does hint that the phone might be available next month at the latest. [full story]

September 26 - 10:05am EDT   In addition to the just-introduced Haptic 2, Samsung has introduced a second touchscreen phone already examined by Russian site Mail.ru. The M8800 Pixon is the first known touchscreen cellphone to carry an eight-megapixel camera and carries extra photography features normally reserved for dedicated cameras, including blink and face detection, a wide dynamic color range and image stabilization. Video capture is also sharper than most at a roughly DVD-level 720x480 at full speed. [full story]

September 26 - 8:25am EDT   Samsung on Friday stepped up its efforts to lead touchscreen phones with the launch of the AnyCall Haptic 2, the second generation of its device in one year to rely on its namesake vibration feedback technology to simulate physical button presses on its screen. The quick follow-up to the March original is distinguished by its customization: users can personalize the vibrate mode and have access to more than three times the number of widgets on the home screen for quick access to weather and other info. [full story]

September 15 - 4:00pm EDT   A report published over the weekend has revealed a new smartphone from ASUS, a relative newcomer to the full-touchscreen handset game. Unlike the company‘s P552w handset unveiled last week, the device (codenamed Glaxy7) looks to feature a more original design, though it looks basically like Samsung's Omnia range. The unofficial specs for the quad-band GSM phone reveal it will not use the North American WCDMA frequency, only supporting 900MHz, 1900MHz and 2100MHz. Believed to wear the Zest name when it launches, the phone will feature a 3.5-inch touchscreen with an 800x480 resolution and ASUS’ custom Glide 1.5 interface running on Windows Mobile 6.1. [full story]

September 4 - 12:45pm EDT   New versions of Samsung's i900 Omnia smartphone are incoming, FCC filings appear to document. Two new Samsung phones, the i907 and i910, have been tested and approved by the FCC, revealing some of their features. The i910 may be the most significant of the two due to CDMA support, allowing use with carriers such as Sprint and Verizon. The i907 meanwhile supports dual-band WCDMA, which may mark it as the rumored AT&T edition. [full story]

July 2 - 1:35pm EDT   A Czech leak today has revealed a Samsung phone in development that will stand as an alternative to the i900 Omnia. The i740 will still have a 640x480 touchscreen with Windows Mobile 6.1 but makes a number of cuts to reduce the cost, including dropping 3G and Wi-Fi access in favor of EDGE, a three-megapixel camera instead of the Omnia's five, and no large amounts of internal storage. [full story]

June 23 - 2:10pm EDT   Samsung's i900 Omnia is already in queue to appear at AT&T, according to a claimed leak surfacing from BGR. The touchscreen phone would be close to the reference design but add a MediaFLO tuner that allows it to receive AT&T's Mobile TV live digital broadcasts; it should also have access to the carrier's Internet streaming music and video services and would use AT&T's Navigator service with its built-in GPS reception. [full story]

June 9 - 12:35am EDT   Samsung on Monday hoped to preempt Apple's announcements with the launch of the i900 Omnia. The Korean firm's latest touchscreen phone is also its first to use Windows Mobile 6.1 but includes a custom TouchWiz front-end more friendly to home users; like the HTC Touch Pro and Touch Diamond, it uses Opera Mobile in place of Internet Explorer for web browsing. A relatively unique miniature trackpad serves as a fallback for when on-screen buttons are too small to control, while an accelerometer (still rare in Windows Mobile devices) auto-rotates the display when the phone is tilted on its side. [full story]