Review: Samsung Omina Pro B7610

Samsung’s Omnia Pro B7610 is bit of a case of ‘everything but the kitchen sink’. It is a Windows Mobile 6.5 device with Samsung’s well known widget-based user interface sitting on top of that. Hardware-wise it sports a sliding qwerty keyboard. And there are some spectacular specifications under the hood too.

Windows Mobile 6.5 is very well hidden beneath an interface we’re used to seeing on many of Samsung’s handsets. A sidebar can be pulled out, and from it you can pull widgets onto the screen. There are three main screens between which you flick with a finger-sweep. These can all be filled with widgets.

The main home screen also has a messaging notifications area and a set of shortcuts so you can get quickly to your most used apps. You can go into overdrive with all these shortcut options and make things look very busy indeed. The only Windows Mobile giveaway is the status bar at the head of the screen, complete with Start menu.

But in fact, this ‘look’ is one of two that are available. Tap a button on the left side of the screen and the whole appearance changes to a more staid looking display. Again you can drag elements onto the screen from a sidebar, but there’s only the one home screen this time.

What this amounts to is Samsung’s way of letting you switch between Work and Leisure modes of use. You can toy with the appearance of each setting, as both can be customised in terms of wallpaper, ringtones and Today screen images.

There’s more mix and match between Samsung’s user interface and Windows Mobile as you delve deeper into the device. In the Settings area, for example, Samsung has decided to skin things to look Samsung-like. And in SMS creation and Word Mobile you write white text on a black background. Seasoned Windows Mobile users might find it a bit confusing, and it’s not terribly elegant.

A key feature of the Omnia Pro B7610 is its slide-out keyboard. When activated the screen pops into wide mode and you are ready to type. The keys are large and clearly marked, they depress well, and a good software generated clicking sound is emitted when a key is pressed. We got to around 80 percent of our maximum typing speed on such keyboards, indicating that this one is a good effort. We particularly like the key that brings up a Composer menu letting you quickly get to messaging, email, calendar, notes and a search feature.

There are soft keyboards too. The one in tall mode is reasonably comfortable to use, the one in wide mode is a little less so simply because the space bar is not centered and the fact that for some reason the accelerometer did not want to kick in so using the soft keyboard in wide mode actually required us to have the hard keyboard out to force the screen into wide format.

The screen is one of the stars of this particular show being an AMOLED and therefore offering excellent viewing angles. Its 3.5-inches of display area is welcome, and it does a good job of displaying information clearly on its 480 x 800 pixels. But the touch sensitivity is not what it could be, and we found often we had to tap twice to get the desired effect, which is a great shame.

There’s 1GB of internal memory plus another 512MB of storage and a microSD card slot under the backplate. With HSDPA to 3.6Mbps download speeds, a 5 megapixel camera, DivX and Xvid video playback, Wi-Fi and TV out capability the Omnia Pro B7610 is well equipped in the multimedia department. You don’t get a TV out lead, though, which would have been a nice addition.

In the end we found that we like what Samsung is trying to do with the Omnia Pro B7610, but we don’t think it quite ticks all boxes as Samsung might have intended, especially when compared to some of the other side-sliding smartphones on the market at the moment. More attention to detail might have made for a much better device.

Price (as reviewed): £366
Supplied by: www.clove.co.uk

Essential Verdict
Performance: 7/10
Design: 8/10
Features: 8/10
Value for Money: 8/10
Overall score: 7/10

Written by Sandra Vogel. Originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine.

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