Samsung Omnia Pro B7610 review

The Samsung Omnia series had been growing in popularity with consumers for some time now, so how will the Omnia Pro B7610 shape up?

The device itself is designed for users that want a smartphone that will double-up as both a work and pleasure-kind-of-device – why else would it have a dual homescreen?

But that's not all, there's also the ability to flick between two main screen designs one more for leisure use, the other more for work. You switch between them by holding down a side button on the handset.

The former has by default Samsung’s bright sunflower background and three screens between which you move with a horizontal finger sweep. The latter has a more staid blue and grey colour scheme and extends beyond the screen height offering more info as you finger sweep vertically.

You can customise both for look, natch. And you can pull widgets from a sidebar onto the main screen, so that it contains elements you really need. The range available varies between the two screens, with the work view offering a less fun-and-games type array than the leisure look.

The Omnia Pro B7610 is a chunky beast. It measures a generous 112.6mm tall x 57.8mm wide x 15.9mm thick, and it is a bit on the heavy side at 162.2g. Those dimensions are largely due to the inclusion of a slide-out keyboard which you can use for text entry if the touchscreen isn’t quite what you need at any one time.

The keyboard is superb. Its keys are large, and they depress well. They give off a good click when pushed and we had no problems getting up to a fairly healthy speed. It one of the better slide-out keyboards we’ve come across.

There is a shortcut key on the bottom row near the space bar which when pressed brings up the Composer screen. This gives you fast, one-screen-tap access to a range of applications which could benefit from keyboard use, namely Messaging, Email, Calendar, Notes and a device search tool.

The screen itself is a 3.5-inch AMOLED with a 480x800 pixel resolution. We found it very sharp and bright, and it really comes into its own when displaying video – the Omnia Pro B7610 supports both DivX and Xvid.

The Omnia Pro B7610 runs Windows Mobile 6.5 but, as is the trend with such devices these days, it has been quite heavily skinned. We’ve already noted the two main screens and the ability to drop widgets onto them.

In addition there is a large rounded button beneath the screen which you can press to get to an applications menu offering 12 shortcuts which you can personalise. Or you can get the full Windows Mobile menu by tapping the Start button at the top left of the screen.

The skinning goes fairly deep down so you can avoid encountering the small and fiddly icons that are inherent in the Windows Mobile operating system quite well. In fact, the interface is very like that anyone familiar with TouchWiz on a Samsung handset will already know.

Sometimes, though, this can make for confusion. There are, for example, two media players, Samsung’s and Microsoft’s, and two versions of your diary, Microsoft’s and one from Samsung.

They access the same data, but look different and vary a little in operation and features. And when it comes to the Web you can choose between Opera and Internet Explorer. You can fiddle around between the different apps to find which suits you best. Among Samsung’s extras is also an FM radio and Google Maps.

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