By John Chan, CNET Asia
18/08/2009
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/mobilephones/0,39051199,44831371p,00.htm

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.

Features

Running on the Windows Mobile 6.1 (WM6.1) Standard operating system means the B7320 doesn't come with a touchscreen. Like the i600 with its carousel, card-like custom interface, Samsung has introduced a new Wiz Pro software on top of the WM6.1. From the Home screen, you can access your favorite contacts, music player, photo gallery and frequently accessed applications. These are quick and easy to use but offer nothing beyond the first-tier experience. Once you get past this skin, the rest is standard Windows Mobile software. Naturally, you get all the features that come with the Microsoft OS including Exchange support, document handling and Windows Live Messenger.

According to Samsung, the Wiz Pro user interface will be available for future Samsung WM6.1 Standard devices. Additionally, once Microsoft makes the upcoming WM6.5 software available, Samsung will be providing a software upgrade for this model and all its other Omnia devices announced at CommunicAsia.

Connectivity-wise, the B7320 comes with 7.2Mbps HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth which supports the A2DP profile for wireless stereo headsets. Aside from the camera on the back for snapshots, this smartphone also has with a secondary front-facing one for video calls. It doesn't have GPS built-in, so those who need that feature should look elsewhere.

Photos taken at their maximum resolution using the main 3.2-megapixel camera look fine for casual shots. Don't expect too much from it as the sensor is pretty rudimentary with no autofocus and LED for dark scenes.

For storage, you get 100MB on the device and up to 16GB if you buy an optional microSDHC card slot.

Performance

We were pretty impressed when we saw a 1,480mAh battery listed on the B7320's specifications sheet. Given its small screen (which usually means lower energy consumption), we expected good stamina from the high-capacity battery. Unfortunately, this was not to be. A single full charge gave us under two days of use. This included some Web surfing using HSDPA, light texting and making calls. Sad to say, the battery life of this smartphone wasn't any better than large touchscreen handsets and heavy users will probably end up charging it daily.

On the bright side, performance was snappy, thanks to its 528MHz Qualcomm processor and copious 256MB RAM. We did not notice any slowdowns during our review period. Memory management was also simple because pressing and holding the Home button would call up the Task Manager, letting you quit applications running in the background effortlessly.

Call quality was acceptable. We did not experience any dropped calls and on the occasions we had to use the speakerphone, it worked well enough in quiet locations.

Conclusion

All things considered, the B7320 isn't particularly exciting. Aside from the Wiz Pro layer which is merely skin-deep, this smartphone offers nothing innovative. Other handsets with similar form factors include the HTC Snap and upcoming Nokia E72, both of which offer more in terms of aesthetics and features.

That said, the price of this Omnia Pro is very enticing. Its full retail price is S$498 and it can be had for under S$200 when operator subsidies are factored in. If all you want is a no-nonsense messaging phone on a tight budget, the B7320 might just fit the bill.