UK: Samsung Omnia discontinued at Orange – NOT
By Ben Robinson on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 2:34 PM PST In Samsung, The Digital Life, Touch Control
Samsung Omnia: Feature-heavy touchscreen device
Mobile News has an interesting story on the Samsung Omnia @ Orange UK…..
Customers at Orange staff are apparently claiming that retail staff have said the Omnia has been discontinued – which both Samsung and Orange are denying.
The whole thing apparently kicked off with forum threads on a Money saving site in the UK – suggestions of the device being discontinued due to software issues and multiple returns have been floated, but appear unsubstantiated.
So let’s open the floor to IntoMobile readers generally, who have Omnias? What’s your feeling about how the device is working? Is all well with the touchscreen wonder?
Separately, Samsung also emailed me about the fact that Omnia does pretty much everything – if you want to take a look at their website, which does have a stack of info on, click here.
[Via: Mobile News]
More complaints than anything else… by far:
http://mobileroar.com/forum/samsung-omnia
Is that mobileroar site for people without the brains to go to ModaCo? More complaints than anything else? What utter drivel.
Anyway…
I’ve got an Omnia and it’s a great phone however there’s a few things you need to do to it when you get it – caution though, this is all at your own risk and you may invalidate your warranty.
First of all, get rid of the brand firmware. Vodafone and Orange do have issue with their ROMs and aren’t exactly being quick at getting new versions out so you should flash to one of the newer Samsung ROMs – HI1 and HI2 are good. HI3 is out but it’s a bit raw just now. As well as making your phone faster and more responsive it also irons out the vast majority of any bugs plus you get the default software back (Voda hide Google Launcher for example).
Secondly, go to some decent WinMo fan sites as listed here:
http://www.pocketpcmag.com/cms/bestoftheweb/bestsites
MoDaCo and XDA Developers are particularly good. There you’ll find lots of hints, tweaks, user guides and software to install. Using the list you can also find thousands of applications, many of the free for use. This turns your phone from brilliant to awesome.
And it is awesome. This is a proper smartphone and whilst it’s not as intuitive as other phones it kicks the crap out of them for usefulness and feaures.
Orange have just confirmed to me that the omnia has been discontinued! will have to stick with my tocco for now, which is buggy as hell!!!
I am today returning my omnia which I got last week due to constant feedback in the ear piece. Contract is through orange. Phone is discontinued so I have to choose another. Apart from the feedback issue, the software has been ok and isn’t sluggish in anyway. all has been great but texting is time consuming.
Orange have mucked me about rotten about getting an Omnia. I have no been told by various customer service that the phone is indefinately discontinued due to software issues. When I told them that Orange and Samsung are denying this online they can say nothing other than “I’m just telling you what we have been told to say”.
Orange are living in the dark ages if they think this kind of poor customer service wont effect customer relations or staff motivation.
I was offered the Omnia for free when I eanted to upgrade one of the handsets on my account a few weeks ago… but when I rang to see why it hadn’t been delivered I was told that “this is something that has happened a lot recently” – staff taking upgrade orders then not putting them through… apparently they do it to get their bonuses before the end of the month!! ? which doesn’t really explain why they don’t just put them through while they’re at it?!
Anyway, I was told at that point that the Omnia had been discontinued so I ordered the Tocca, which is fine and i like it. So We then wanted to upgrade the second handset, wanted a HTC but couldn’t have it (although I could have sworn it was on the upgrade menu when I was trying to upgrade the first handset…) and we were told on about 3 occasions (we like to phone at different times to see if there are different answers!) that the Omnia was still discontinued….. (no explanation, just “it’s discontinued”)…
THat was last Wednesday… then yesterday I was logged to my account online to check again, and there it was, top of the menu of upgrade options, the Omnia, BUT this time for £129.99. With the £80 ‘discount’ it was £50 but i just ordered it to be done with.
Why don’t they just be honest – My guess is that demand was very high, so they stopped offering it for a bit then jacked the price. Simple.
My guess
It isn’t available to buy off the main Orange website. No longer listed in the phones. You can still find it by searching Google and following the link direct to the product information page, but there is no “Buy” link.
Interestingly though, it is listed – and available to buy – from their Business store. So it seems that businesses can buy it, but not consumers…
I called up Orange to upgrade to either a Pixon or an Omnia yesterday (27/11)and was told by the upgrade dept. that the omnia was discontinued “thats what happens when you try to load so much software onto a phone, if you ask me” she said.
I was then put through to the retentions team, who said that because they had so few of them, they had all been allocated to the small business contracts.
My suspicion is that Orange are chasing the cash, identifying that they can’t get as many as they’d like so giving them to the more valuable business customers, but trying not to annoy the hoy-poloy “so my money isn’t good enough” response by saying they don’t work.
Shame they can’t keep it consistent.
Well I was able to purchase the Omnia from Orange? although it is only normally available to businesses.
I have been looking at upgrading my phone, Really wanted the iPhone and with all the speculation on the net that Orange UK was in the pipeline to get it I shrugged off upgrade offers from Orange to see what happened. It looks like they wont get it well not anytime soon anyway, been waiting since October to upgrade so looked about and the Omnia seemed what I wanted, went to my local Orange shop who were happy to upgrade me at £120 the salesman said I cant change the price but call Orange you will be able to barter with them, tell them you want to leave if they dont budge. (My intention anyway.
So I called the Upgrade team, Ironically I was told (as above) this has been removed from sale as they has loads of technical difficulties and were getting more sent back then they were selling. I explained this must be non-sense as I had just come from an Orange shop where I could get one over the counter that it was on display clear as day for sale to new customers yet me and also at the time was still showing on there website. All he said was well can only tell you what I can tell you. So I asked to speak to cancellations.
A lady came on the phone and wanted to know why I was interested in leaving, I explained and she said no what I had been told was incorect (in a tone that suggested this was not the first time this had happened) she explained the phone was fine but that the decision had been made to pull the Omnia from general sale and make it exclusive to business customers only. I said that was a joke, that people want the handset and we do not all have business contracts. I said as your staff have pointblank lied, that I had been a good constant customer would she do it for me, I was told that there was nothing she could do. So I ended the call.
Got a phone call today approx 2 weeks on from all the above, from the Orange Upgrade team, They guy said im well overdue an upgrade did I have anything in mind so I said well yeah the Omnia his answer was the what… never hurd of it! I explained all the above, he searched his records and sure enough the phone is not listed on there general sale pages only on business pages, he said it was why he had never hurd of it.. but was a decent guy when I spoke to him about wanting the iPhone he said if you want it that bad and dont want to leave Orange, go to France, buy it on Orange there (As they have the exclusive rights like o2 in UK) and change settings to English sorted!! hmmm decisions decisions.
Still very poor of Orange shame on you!!
I’m in my upgrade period but they won’t let me have one. Its still in business phones tho. In the shop you can buy it yet they wanted £195 for the phone (plus the renewal of my contract. I really want this phone – might have to look for things to sell!
Had 3 HTC Touch Diamonds from Orange in the last 3 months. Range of problems but the worst being bad signal strength. I informed Orange last week that enough was enough and I wanted another phone – result, I’m now the proud owner of an Omnia i900!
I’ve only had it for 2 days but it is far superiour to the HTC TD, just don’t like all the Orange pre-installed crap.
So guys, I can assure you the Omnia i900 IS available from Orange.
I got the omnia back in september and just lost it. Was a tragedy. The original came with no orange branding apart form a wallpaper. Was amazing. Google maps, MSN Live messenger all pr einstalled. The new one I have has the rather terrible orange DVHH1 rom. No google maps, No MSN and even worse no easy to view Icons and buttons. All rather terrible grey white and orange Icons that I can hardly see so its getting a fresh update to the MSHJ1 Rom version from samsung. Hope all goes well. Ha ha. Its just cot me 170 pounds to replace from orange.
I just got a 16Gb Omnia i900 on Orange UK through the phone sales team
Dolphin 35 (£29.26 p/month) giving me 600 minutes, unlimited texts and 250Mb internet included.
I am very happy with it (especially now I have installed the latest Samsung ROM instead of the standard buggy slow featureless Orange one)