Samsung Omnia Pro B7610 Review

Yes, it’s another Omnia. This time though with a slide out QWERTY keyboard. There is certainly a market for this style of device but can the Samsung compete with the all ready well established HTC Touch Pro2?

Samsung OmniaPro B7610

What’s in the box:

• Device
• Battery
• Charger
• USB Cable
• Wired Headset
• Manuals
• Software

Take a look at Matt’s Samsung Omnia Pro B7610 unboxing video for a preview of the hardware and OS.

The ten second review:

Device: Samsung OmniaPro B7610

Price: £366.85

Summary: A feature packed Windows phone with the bonus of a slide out keyboard.

Best of: Keyboard, GPS, Wi-Fi, 1GB Internal Memory + MicroSD up to 32GB.

Worst of: Lock button

Samsung Omnia Pro B7610 Specification:

• Operating System – Windows Mobile 6.5
• Processor – 800 MHz
• Memory – 1GB Internal
• Display – AMOLED resistive touchscreen, 16M colours, 800 x 480 pixels, 3.5 inches
• GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 
• 3G Network HSDPA 900 / 2100  
• 3G HSDPA 3.6 Mbps
• WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, DLNA
• Bluetooth  v2.0 with A2DP
• MicroUSB
• GPS – Integrated with A-GPS
• MicroSD up to 32GB
• DivX/XviD/MPEG4/3gp/H.263/H.264 player
• TV Out
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• Camera – 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
• Battery – Standard battery, Li-Ion 1500 mAh
• Dimensions – 112.6 x 57.8 x 16.2 mm
• Weight – 159 g with battery

General:

On the top of the handset are two ports which come with plastic covers. One is the headphone jack and the other is the microUSB port.

Samsung OmniaPro B7610 Top

The left hand side houses the up/down volume rocker and also the “work & life” button.

Samsung OmniaPro B7610 left Side

The dedicated camera button and the lock key are located on the right side.

Samsung OmniaPro B7610 Right Side

On the rear of the device is the camera lens, flash and speaker grill.

Samsung OmniaPro B7610 Rear

The front is fairly typical Samsung with a menu button between the call send and end keys. In addition, at the top, are the secondary camera lens and light sensors.

Samsung OmniaPro B7610 Front

Highlights

• QWERTY Keyboard
• GPS
• 3G/Wi-Fi
• Multimedia

Lowlights

• Lock button
• Finger print magnet

Review:

Straight out of the box the Samsung OmniaPro B7610 feels quite chunky and weighty but I would expect this as it has that nice slide out QWERTY keyboard. Its rounded edges give it a comfortable feel in the hand. Like most of Samsungs devices it would appear to be very well made although very plastic. The battery cover has that nice maroon colour to it, like on the Samsung Jet and Omnia II, which appears black in some lighting conditions and maroon in others. Its quite a finger print magnet though like the 3.5 inch screen.

Any one who buys this device is obviously after the slide out keyboard, otherwise you would have bought the Omnia II.

Samsung OmniaPro B7610 Keyboard

As I mentioned at the top of the page this device will be up against the HTC Touch Pro2 as both are slide out Windows phones. The keyboard on the Samsung is quite different to that on the HTC. For a start the Samsung has a four row, compared to five on the HTC. This means that when entering numbers you must hold down the ALT key to allow you to access the numbers on the top row. Not a major issue but its easier on the HTC with its dedicated number keys.

The keys themselves are also very different. They are actually a bit larger on the Samsung but there is no spacing between them like on the HTC.

Samsung OmniaPro B7610 vs. HTC Touch Pro2

The feel of the keys is also totally unique. The Samsung keys have a kind of rubbery feel to them and require only a very light press. The HTC keys are much firmer.

Which keyboard is better? That’s a hard one. If I had to pick I would probably go with the HTC Touch Pro2 purely for the fact that the spacing between the keys makes for slightly easier typing due to the fact that you can feel your way round the keyboard better. The Samsung OmniaPro B7610 keyboard is fantastic too but I think HTC have just got the edge on this one.

However the sliding mechanics feel a little better on the OmniaPro. It does not tilt like the HTC but its a much smoother slide and requires less force to perform the for mentioned slide movement. Unfortunately once open though the OmniaPros screen feels a little wobbly when you move the phone. On the Touch Pro2 it is real tight.

Samsung OmniaPro B7610 with keyboard open

The Samsung OmniaPro B7610 runs Windows Mobile 6.5 which has been around for a while now. Like all Windows phones you get the standard stuff such as Office Mobile, My Phone, Marketplace and Windows Live Messenger.

As on the Omnia II, Samsung have put a heavy skin over the top of most things in Windows Mobile. To start with with we have the homescreens.

The OmniaPro comes as standard with three different options. The first is new Windows homescreen that all 6.5 devices come with. Its not the most fancy but it does work.

Windows Mobile Homescreen

Next we have Samsungs Touchwiz that has been around for a while and it features on the Omnia II, Jet and Pixon among others. This is made up of three screens.  These can be accessed by a simple swipe left or right.

Samsungs TouchWiz

On the left hand side of the screen is the widgets bar. From here you can drag and drop widgets of your choice onto the homescreens giving you access to common features. These can be positioned anywhere on the screen you like.

The third option was a surprise and I didn’t know it existed until half way through the review. On the left hand side of the phone underneath the volume rocker is a button with “W&L” printed on it. This stands for Work and Life. From Touchwiz if you press this button a new homescreen will appear.

Work Homescreen

This new homescreen is the Work one and is obviously designed to give you fingertip access to any information you may need to keep in communication with people. The screen comes as standard as seen above but I was pleased to see it can be customised:

Work Screen Settings

I have never been a fan of Touchwiz and finding this option was a real treat as I really liked it. Its not as fancy as Touchwiz which is the “Life” option but its meant to make you as efficient as possible, as many people that use Windows phones have them as a business tool. Within the main menu you will find the “mode manager”. This will allow you to tweak the settings for the homescreens. The best bit here I think is that if you do toggle between “work & life” you can alter the sound settings which will be handy if you are not allowed your phone to be ringing in the office.

As I mentioned earlier in the review, Samsung have heavily customised the operating system. The first example of this is the menus on the phone. You have two options:

Menu Option One

Menu option one is the standard Windows one and this as always is accessed by pressing the start icon on the top left of the screen. Here you can scroll down the list and this list can go on and on depending how many apps you put on the device. Its a jumpy scroll though! You cannot scroll from top to bottom in one go but only in sections which is a bit annoying. This is a Windows thing though as its the same on many devices.

Option two is accessed by pressing the hardware button between the send and end keys.

Menus Option Two

This is the Samsung menu. It contains the same stuff as the windows menu but just in a different format. This time the menu is made up of four screens that can be scrolled left or right. I’m not sure why Samsung do this as its not any better or worse than the Windows menu in my opinion but that’s just the way it is.

The Samsung OmniaPro B7610 (God, that’s a long title!) comes with a great calendar and this can be accessed from the “Work” homescreen if you choose to have that option onscreen. Scheduling appointments in the calendar is simple and once entered you have several options of viewing the calendar, which you don’t get on some handsets.

Samsung OmniaPro B7610 Calendar

Another nice application on the OmniaPro is MSN Weather.

MSN Weather

Its fairly basic but gives you all the info you need and with three different views. Cor blimey govnor, its chilly today!

Messaging on the Samsung OmniaPro B7610 is a breeze. You can use active sync for one email account and this will push mail to you. In addition you can add numerous other email accounts but these will not be push email. You can set these to sync with the server every 5, 10, 15 mins etc.

For business users you have the added benefit of Office Mobile. Here you can create Word, Excel and OneNote docs and also view PowerPoint. It works a treat on the OmniaPro much like on similar devices.

Web browsing is as good as you would expect on this high end device. The device comes loaded with two different web browsers. The first is the latest version of Internet Explorer which I am not so keen on. The second, and better one,  is Opera Mobile. As the AMOLED screen is so good, web browsing looks fantastic. Scrolling is super smooth and it scrolls faster than some other smartphones. You have the option to view the web pages like you would on a PC or you can select "mobile view" which takes away a lot of the adverts on certain websites and presents the page to fit the phone screen allowing you to only scroll up or down. I prefer browsing this way and the Omnia rendered the pages beautifully.

When using in portrait mode the onscreen keyboard if fabulous. Its sensitive, the keys are a decent size and you get some haptic feedback to round things off.

Watching video on the OmniaPro had its good points and its bad. The bad bit is I could not find a YouTube player on the phone. I cant remember the last time I had a phone that did not come with one but if it was there it was hiding. Its a shame as I tend to use YouTube apps quite a bit.

On the upside watching movies was excellent. The Samsung OmniaPro B7610 comes with a media player installed and I thought this may be restricted to a few formats like WMV files but I put a full movie on the device I had converted from DVD to MP4 and it played fine. The AMOLED screen certainly helped the colours pop out from the screen. It looked sweet.

The one thing that frustrates me the most about Samsung phones is the lock button they put on the device. Once the device goes into standby mode its a real pain having to hold down the lock button for a couple of seconds. Then you have to unlock the screen with the new windows mobile 6.5 screen lock. Its just too much and it got right on my nerves.

One thing I am always pleased with on Samsung phones is the music player. Once again it was fantastic on the OmniaPro B7610. The speaker was of reasonable volume but where Samsung do a great job is with the headphones. They just sound great. They are in ear headphones and feel well built. The music quality always sounds good through these and me and Linkin Park had a good rock session. Good job Samsung.

The camera on the OmniaPro was also very good, just like on the Omnia II. The interface is very nice with lots of on screen options. You can have the flash on, off or on auto. Focus options include macro, face and auto. You can change the exposure so in low light conditions you can let more light into the lens. There are many shooting modes including, single, continuous, smile, mosaic, panorama and action. All work well. There are also many scene modes – portrait, landscape, sunset, dusk & dawn, night, text, sports, indoors, beach & snow, fall colour (autumn), firework and candle light. Samsung really want you to get the best results possible. Its a shame the other major manufactures cant supply as many features with there cameras! In the settings you can alter white balance, effect, ISO, contrast, saturation, sharpness, metering and quality. There is a timer and an anti shake option as well.

Conclusion:

So is the Samsung OmniaPro B7610 a decent device? Hell yeah. I found very few things I didn’t like about it. Its a good all rounder with the added bonus of the slide out keyboard. Is it as good as the HTC Touch Pro2? I would say they are pretty much equal. The keyboard on the HTC TP2 is very slightly better but apart from that its a real close call. The camera on the Samsung is better than on the HTC so that may be a deciding factor.  Keyboard aside I think deciding which to get may come down to the user interface. If you like TouchWiz and its other options then go for the Samsung. If you prefer TouchFlo 3D on the HTC then that’s the one to get.

Posted by: James