"The economy has thrown a wrench into the spokes of the wheels of the smartphone machinery," explained IDC Canada's Kevin Restivo at a launch event for the Samsung OMNIA smartphone. While sales in the category are anticipated to slow in 2009, Restivo assures that smartphones are gearing up for explosive growth going forward.

"[The current situation] is just a blip in an otherwise long-term, upward trend," Restivo, the research firm's Senior Analyst for Mobility Research, reassured. In fact, Restivo says that the smartphone category, characterized by mobile phones that incorporate advanced features like GPS, e-mail, and multimedia, is growing more quickly in Canada than it is in the U.S. and other countries around the world because our market is under-penetrated. According to Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA), 67 per cent of the Canadian population currently owns a mobile phone. Even so, while 7,805,100 traditional mobile phones were shipped in 2008 (according to IDC's Mobile Device Tracker), only 2,710,095 "smart" phones made their way into the hands of consumers.

With that said, there's plenty of room for growth in the smartphone category, especially in Canada. This makes it an opportune time for Samsung to launch its OMNIA smartphone north of the border that promises to give consumers, well, everything they'd need.

The name literally means "everything" in Latin, and accurately sums up what this phone is all about. The touch-screen device, which will operate on the EVDO network in Canada, permits access to e-mail via Microsoft Outlook Mobile, and comes equipped with an Opera HTML web browser, built-in GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth (with one-touch pairing for both), Fm radio, and 5 MP camera that can also capture video. You can also open, read, and edit a variety of documents since the smartphone runs on the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system, which has some neat offerings of its own. Threaded text messaging, for example, lets you view sent and received SMS' as a line-listed conversation versus just individual messages. Using a neat third-party business card reader that comes standard with the OS, you can snap a photo of a business card and the details will automatically convert to digital text and save to your phonebook.

Typing can be accomplished by touch via a variety of on-screen keyboards that can be viewed in both horizontal and vertical orientation, including Samsung's own option that boasts a larger font size; or by using the included stylus. The 3.2" (240 x 400) screen incorporates tactile feedback as well, which emits a slight, reassuring vibration when you successfully hit a key.

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