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Samsung Omnia Pro B7610

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By John Chan, CNET Asia
Jul 14, 2009

Samsung announced quite a number of Windows Mobile phones during CommunicAsia 2009 in various form factors. The bulkiest one of the lot is the Omnia Pro B7610, which comes with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Let's take a look at its features and see if its similarity to the HTC Touch Pro2 will render this smartphone irrelevant given its launch date of late 2009.

Upside

Though not as large as the 3.7-inch screen on the Omnia II, the B7610's touchscreen display is still pretty impressive measuring 3.5 inches diagonally. It has a resolution of 800 x 480 (WVGA) and is of the AMOLED variety.

Samsung hasn't revealed exactly which processor will power the B7610, but we know it is clocked at 800MHz from the official specs sheet. This will help system-intensive applications run at higher speeds, a good addition for the business professional.

Connectivity-wise, the company hasn't skimped by including everything you could possibly need in a high-end smartphone. These include HSDPA, quad-band GSM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS for navigation.

Will this Omnia Pro still be relevant in Q4 with the HTC Pro2 (right) already available?


Like the Omnia II, the TouchWiz 2.0 user interface is found on the Omnia Pro. From the little time we had with it, this custom UI did a good job of making Windows Mobile easier to use and we look forward to putting it through its paces in a future review. Also on the usability front, the B7610 sports a slide-out QWERTY keypad so it's more convenient to type emails and text messages.

A 5-megapixel camera with autofocus is included with the B7610. It comes with 1GB of internal storage and a microSD slot which supports up to 32GB cards.

Downside

Like many other smartphones with landscape-oriented slide-out keyboards, this Omnia Pro is quite thick at 16.2mm.

Though it has HSDPA for data transfers over the network, we were surprised that it's capped at 3.6Mbps, not 7.2Mbps. In other words, it will not be able to take advantage of the fastest mobile broadband plans available from operators, which may put some power users off.

Outlook

Samsung just announced the retail price of the Omnia II to be S$898, quite a bit lower than the over-S$1,000 price tag usually seen on high-end smartphones. The chaebol has been very competitive in terms of pricing for its Windows Mobile handsets and we won't be surprised if the B7610 gets sold at a very attractive rate, too.

It's still a way off from reaching the market in Q4 as slated, which also means it will likely ship with the upcoming Windows Mobile 6.5. Even if it does come with WM6.1 initially, Samsung has committed to a free software update when WM6.5 becomes available.

Given how similar its features are to the HTC Touch Pro2, there's a possibility that the B7610 will meet with muted reception at the end of the year. Users expect constant improvements in mobile phones and being almost identical (features wise) to something that's available now could be its undoing. In any case, we'll have to wait a few months to see how things pan out for this Omnia Pro.