Inspired by this post, I’ve been through the Omnia Pro B7610 manual [PDF] in detail and picked out some key features that you may or may not be aware of. Note that I can’t find any confirmation of SWYPE being available as mentioned in the reference article above. There are some indications that Samsung may have licensed SWYPE in forums/twitter posts but nothing has been confirmed. I have an email out to Swype to get this one cleared up.

In no particular order then, here are some interesting features of the Samsung Omnia Pro B7610 (Qwerty)

Click to enlarge images.

• Podcatcher. A feature I have been using heavily for the last 18 months on my Nokia N82. It’s a feature I would hate to lose.
• Business card capture and OCR. The camera has a business-card capture mode. There’s also an OCR feature called ‘translate’ that should pull out the text into a document where you can cut and paste into your address book.
• Image blogging client. It’s not clear what blog/service types it supports but I’d be very happy if it supported posting to WordPress. It seems that there isn’t much scope for text input which is a shame.
• DNLA support – My Xbox should be able to play content located on the Omnia Pro. Up until now I’ve only used uPnP so I’m not sure how it will integrate with my, largely Microsoft-based, media center back and front-end.
• DivX certified for streaming DivX content up to 320×240. 320×240 doesn’t sound much but gives excellent quality on a 3.5” screen at bitrates down to about 800kbps and it doesn’t strain the CPU like H.264 would. How useful this is depends on the content available out there.
• Etiquette mode (turn device over to silence)
• Array mic. A second  mic near the speaker is presumably used to help with noise cancelation when used as a speakerphone. Potential HTC Touch Pro2 owners might be interested in this.
• Dedicated lock button
• A2DP headphone support. Standard on most smartphones these days.
• Micro SDHC support up to 32GB. Needed as the internal memory is only 1GB.
• FM radio with RDS and record function. It would be nice to see an application that records RDS-based traffic reports in the background so you always have a set of recent reports you can use before setting out on a journey.
• Auto-panorama mode photos. Simply move your camera across the panorama and the devices takes the picture and stitches them together as one photo when you’re finished. Quite how good this is at stitching remains to be seen but this could be a fun feature to use for live blogging an event.
• WOW HD and SRC CS headphone modes improve sound quality and emulate a surround sound experience. I’m no fan of audio post-processing but having used WOW HD on UMPCs, it does seem to work well for mid-range headphones. I hope there’s a simple EQ available too.
• Built-in video editor for combining videos and images. Overlay audio track. VERY useful for preparing a post to YouTube without having to bother with a PC. Format and bitrates not confirmed. Speed may be an issue. I don’t see support for text overlays.
• Built in RSS reader client. Most people are using Google Read Mobile these days and with Opera 9.5 that should be a fast experience.
• Found on the Samsung Web Site – Vibe Tonz. Haptic feedback capability.

One last thing:

MMS and multitasking support (!!)

Based on this info and the knowledge that WM6.5 (WIndows Phone) is coming and that there’s a big software ecosystem out there, I’m now more excited about the Omnia Pro as a day-to-day phone than the N900. These software features are significant and I feel sure that the Nokia N900 won’t be this end-user ready when launched in 3 weeks. I’m still trying to get a test device lined up though. If anyone wants to provide one for review here and on UMPCPortal.com, please get in touch.