What are the most important things one looks for when purchasing a new smartphone? Is it the display size and quality? The range of features and functions it provides? The operating system? The quality of the reception and of the audio playback? The number of megapixels its built-in camera comes equipped with? The estimated talk time/ stand-by time provided by the built-in battery? And, last but certainly not least, its SAR value?

Anyway, there are very few people out there who use the same set of criteria when making a purchase decision. In our case, that purchase decision was the SAR value, as we were looking for a certain portable communication device that would not only allow us to communicate, but also affect our long-term health to a very low degree. And the device we've ended up getting was, in fact, Samsung's Omnia HD (i8910), a Symbian S60-powered touchscreen smarphone that, in the end, managed to overpass even our greatest expectations in terms of... well, pretty much everything.

Now, what you'll read about as follows is not a review. No, it's not even a hands-on experience. It's just the experience of a user who bought the Omnia HD after catching a glimpse of it in a shop window (yeah, you might call it love at first sight) and ended up being absolutely “aggravated” (for all the right reasons) by some of the features, which, in fact, turn it into one of the best smartphones we've ever seen, not to mention of the top picks in this field for 2009, as far as we're concerned.

OK, you might have noticed a little discrepancy above, but the truth of the matter is that we were actually looking for a low SAR phone, and finding the Omnia HD was just a stroke of luck (just 0.4 SAR level is not something you'll easily encounter in the case of other such communication devices). In fact, we thought we were pretty lucky when we found out that that OLED-equipped beauty of a phone emitted such a low amount of radiation, but the revelations regarding Samsung's smartphone were only the beginning.

After we started using it, we couldn't help but feel absolutely amazed by pretty much everything this thing had to offer. First of all, the 3.7-inch Full Touch AMOLED display (360 x 640-pixel resolution) is absolutely superb, whether you're playing an HD movie or you're browsing through the phone's various menus. Then, the Symbian S60 OS (version 5.0, with a Samsung proprietary GUI running on top) works without a hitch, the device remaining active no matter what you decide to throw at it (in other words, we haven't really managed to block it, despite actually trying to).

The built-in 8-megapixel CMOS camera is yet another feature rarely encountered in this particular segment, while the built-in speakers manage to get the job done without any significant problems. It's also important to note that, despite of the very low SAR value, the quality of the voice calls is absolutely great, in any conditions, the device maintaining at least a couple of 3G signal lines even in areas where reception is not particularly impressive.

We've talked quite a lot about the Omnia HD, but we haven't tackled yet the most important issue: the battery life. As you might find out by checking out the specs list, the Omnia HD comes equipped with a 1,500 mAh battery, but this value really doesn't even come close to revealing just how absolutely awesome (and, to some extent, frustrating in its awesomeness) the power pack really is.

So, what we did after getting the phone was to first run a couple of HD movies in order to completely deplete the battery, for a brand-new, “clean” full charge. We had had a rather unpleasant experience with an HTC Hero, which, despite all our tweaks, didn't really manage to go over the three-day battery life mark (during normal use), so we were quite curious to see just how this thing would behave. Oh, and for the sake of the argument, we'll also have to define “normal use,” so that you'll know what to expect from the Samsung Omnia HD as well. So, as far as we're concerned, the normal use consists of some average talking (I don't know, about 15 to 20 minutes per day), browsing the web for a couple of minutes, checking one's e-mail, listening to some music, watching at least one or two HD video clips... that kind of stuff.

After completing the full charge (which only takes around three hours), we proceeded to using the device normally. Three days later (chose this interval in order to match the FULL battery life of the HTC Hero), the battery had dropped only to around 75-80 percent. Absolutely amazing, we thought, and carried on.

Two days later (yeah, it was day five without a recharge, already), the battery had dropped to around 45 percent. Indeed, we did strain it a bit, by recording some videos and playing back more HD movies, but we also had a relative period of inactivity as far as the calls were concerned, which kind of made up for the more intense playback.

The next day (day six), the battery had reached 30 percent. That was twice the life of the HTC Hero already. However, we were beginning to get a little worried, since we really needed the device to be ready for an upcoming trip in a couple of days' time, and we really didn't want to spoil the test. Day seven also came and went by, with the battery holding on at around 15 percent.

On the eigth day, however, we were forced to take some measures, since we really had to get the battery depleted for a full charge. The phone had only one battery line left, so we figured that the “depletion time” would be quite short. But, boy, were we mistaken.

So, the first thing we did was to start playing HD movies on it. After around one hour (yeah, that's 60 full minutes), the final battery line of the Omnia HD failed and the device entered the protected functioning mode, when movie playback was not possible, but we still could use the phone for making calls. Which is exactly what we did. And in order to make sure that even the last few remaining electrons were used, we also employed the loudspeaker.

Every normal phone would only last for a couple of minutes in such a situation. However, the Samsung Omnia HD's no ordinary phone, and, without any exaggerations (also, much to our frustration, in the end), it took 21 minutes for the phone's battery to be completely “dead.” Yes, there's no mistake, 21 minutes of talking via the loudspeakers, with no battery indication whatsoever on the main display. In fact, we felt like the smartphone was mocking us, playing a game of “who's gonna crack up first.”

As you can imagine, we were extremely impressed by the phone's battery life, and, taking into account what we've mentioned above, we really think that the Omnia HD offers a very good SAR/Display quality/battery life ratio. The pricing's a whole different issue (don't expect it to be particularly affordable), but it's most likely worth every penny.