Samsung Omnia Pro B7320

By John Chan, CNET Asia
Aug 18, 2009

Samsung announced quite a number of new Omnia smartphones about two months ago during the CommunicAsia tradeshow held in Singapore. It didn't take long for the company to release them to market. The Omnia II is already on shelves, and so is the Omnia Pro B7320, a Windows Mobile smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard.

Design

The metallic brown of the B7320 is unusual for a handset targeted at the business productivity crowd, but Samsung seems to have pulled it off. It isn't too radical and we don't foresee those who prefer black phones as having too many objections with the design. Though given a choice, we would have preferred it to be less glossy, especially along the sides and back. The B7320 is quite compact, measuring just 12.6mm in thickness and weighing a light 110g. Again, while the form factor of this Omnia Pro isn't bad, we favor the design of the older Samsung SGH-i600 smartphone for its rugged good looks.

Like many BlackBerry devices, the Omnia Pro has a landscape-oriented screen above a QWERTY keypad. The 2.4-inch display has a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels (QVGA). This is a little small by today's standards and should suffice for those who use it mainly for tasks such as emails and text messaging. But if you are thinking of watching videos or surfing the Internet for more than a few minutes, it won't be very comfortable on the eyes.

The keypad is one of the main features of the B7320 and makes for faster composition of emails and other text-heavy duties. Because the device isn't very wide, keys are located very close to one another, with hardly any space between. It isn't as comfortable to use as, say, a BlackBerry Curve or Bold, but we'll put it on par with the keypad on the Nokia E71, which isn't too bad at all.

There are quite a number of shortcut buttons above the keypad, including the softkeys and a directional pad. The large directional pad is comfortable to use, which is important considering it is the main avenue of navigation as the phone does not come with a touchscreen. The Hang up key doubles as a keylock shortcut--press and hold to lock all buttons. The main power button is on the left, found above the volume controls, while the right side is where you'll find a micro-USB port for charging, syncing and connecting a wired headset. There is no dedicated audio connector, so those who want to listen to music using their own 3.5mm audio headphones will have to purchase an optional adapter.

On the back is a 3.2-megapixel camera with a preview mirror for self-portraits. Below that is the battery cover which hides a microSD card slot. This media expansion slot can be accessed only after removing the battery, so swapping cards will require you to turn the phone off.

Tags: Smart Phone, E-mail, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Keypad, BlackBerry Curve

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