The Samsung Omnia II has been a big hit, so it’s no wonder that Samsung wanted to continue the success of the line by making the same device (more or less) but with a slide-out keyboard. The Omnia Pro B7610 is positioned nicely against the Touch Pro2, but adds a faster CPU and an AMOLED display. Which is superior? Read our full review for the lowdown!
Design
At 112.6 x 57.8 x 16.2mm and 160g, the B7610 is quite a pocketful. This is usually expected of phones with landscape-oriented slide-out keyboards. Compared with the HTC Touch Pro2 (116 x 59.2 x 17.3mm; 179g), it is slightly more compact and lighter. Like the other Omnia phones, the B7610 has a chassis that’s primarily plastic. This includes a battery cover that appears translucent red when viewed at certain angles. Though attractive, we prefer the business-like design of the Pro2 as these models are targeted more at business professional. The front of the B7610 is very clean, occupied mostly by its 3.5-inch OLED screen. This has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, and we found it to display text and images well indoors. It was sufficiently bright when used outdoors in the sun, too. Under this screen are the standard Call and End keys as well as a large Menu button. There is no directional pad here, so selecting items when the phone is held in portrait orientation is done entirely by tapping on the screen. There are buttons on the sides. On the left is where the volume controls are together with a shortcut key that lets you switch between different Home screen modes. The right is where you’ll find the keylock button and the camera shortcut. Charging and syncing are done using a standard micro-USB port on the top. Those who like to use their phones as a digital music player will be pleased to find a dedicated 3.5mm audio jack at the top, too. The keyboard on the B7610 is flat and has very little space between keys. This makes it a little hard to feel where each key is, especially when you are concentrating on the screen. The layout of the keyboard is good, with the most commonly used full-stop and comma symbols getting their own keys. There is also a Composer key which brings up onscreen options to perform tasks like create a new email, SMS or calendar entry. If asked to compare, we prefer the keyboard on the Pro2. While Samsung’s implementation gives the user larger individual keys, the layout and feel of HTC’s keyboard are more efficient. A microSD card slot is available for memory expansion. This is found behind the back battery cover above the battery and does not require you to turn off the device when swapping cards.
Feature
The Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO runs on the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS but you wouldn’t guess that at first sight. If it wasn’t for the start menu icon at the top right to give it away you might spend quite some time confused that you are working with a Samsung feature-phone instead. The company has done an excellent job of customizing the UI. The company’s proprietary TouchWiz UI is installed on top of the Microsoft OS and covers it so completely that it’s hard to come across those boring native menus. From the phonebook to the settings menu, everything is covered by the customized interface. Even the settings themselves have been reorganized to resemble those of the Samsung non-smartphone touchscreen handsets. With Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO you gen a different homescreen for the work and the life mode, which we mentioned earlier. While both use widgets the work mode has a completely new layout, while the life one is rather similar to what we saw on the Samsung I8000 Omnia II for example. The widgets for the work mode are also different and generally more practical. The widgets in work mode are arranged as tabs on you scrollable homescreen in a customizable order. Each individual tab is also scrollable sideways if there is more content that needs to be displayed.
The life mode widgets are the usual mini applications that you can arrange freely on the three different screens available. In either mode, if the user needs to place a new widget on the screen all that has to be done is click the arrow at the bottom left corner of the homescreen and slide the widget bar out. Getting rid of an unwanted widget is done by dropping it back to the bar. The TouchWiz approach is quite similar to the one we witnessed on the Samsung i900 Omnia but the B7610 OmniaPRO has two key advantages over its predecessor. For one – the widgets interface has been nicely improved since, both visually and functionally with the two modes probably being the nicest touch. The other great benefit of the B7610 OmniaPRO is the fact that this time the Samsung engineers decided to go all the way and customize the interface inside out. Not seeing the dull looks of the native screens anywhere is a huge boost to user experience. The new Task Manager is available through the custom Settings menu provided by Samsung. The Task manager not only does it display the currently running processes, but also their RAM and CPU footprint. There’s also a Task switcher that doesn’t display as much info about the running apps but allows you to switch between them.
Unluckily there isn’t a back button on the Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO. It’s not that the handset has lost some functionality because of this, but you will have to reach for the close or ok button at the top right corner of each screen. A key comfortably placed nearer your thumb would certainly have improved usability. We are pretty confident that the omnipresent TouchFLO 3D interface will be ported to the Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO at some stage. However there is no need to rush getting it – as you can see the handset has quite a lot to offer itself.
Performance
We had no issues with the voice quality of the Omnia Pro in our tests. Reception was also good with no dropped calls experienced. Its speakerphone, though not outstandingly loud, will work well in a car when you need a handsfree solution. We got about 1.5 days of use on a single charge of its 1,500mAh battery. This included voice calls, messaging and some Web surfing using HSDPA connectivity. Most users will have to recharge daily. Though the B7610’s 256MB RAM for running applications is pretty standard, with a few programs resident in the memory, we started experiencing slowdowns in the user interface–not a good sign for the busy (and often, impatient) business user. This was most evident when using the Opera browser. Some large pages loaded slowly even when the data network was good and switching between portrait and landscape orientation felt laggy.
Conclusion
The Samsung Omnia Pro B7610 is relatively inexpensive at S$868. When bought from an operator with subsidies, it can be had for just S$398 with a basic mobile plan–and even less with more expensive contracts. Though this smartphone will meet all your basic smartphone needs such as push email, Web surfing and voice calls, the HTC Touch Pro2 has that bit more edge. The B7610 may have a dedicated 3.5mm audio jack for music playback, but no other compelling features that make it stand out from HTC’s offering. The Pro2 is more responsive, more user friendly and has a nifty conference call feature for the business user. That said, HTC’s equivalent model is quite expensive and you can expect to pay about S$200 more than the Samsung given the same operator mobile plan.
Tags: HTC Corporation, MicroSD, Microsoft, Opera, Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO, Samsung i8000, Universal Serial Bus, User interface