My Omnia Pro

Hi guys!

This afternoon I received my B7610 from Clove. It's official UK stock, running windows mobile 6.5. I had a brief mess-around with it… and as a result, I very very nearly missed one of my uni coursework submission deadlines. That's either the sign of a great device… or of an obsessed student, I'll let you decide! But before you do, here are some quick thoughts I have on the device after playing about with it for a good few hours now.

It's worth pointing out that I have not used the WM6.1 build of this device, so I can't make any comparisons there, but I'll make some comparisons to my i900 Omnia.

First thing's first. There was a lot of speculation and rumours that the UK version was to get a slight design change. It was supposed that Samsung were going to move the camera and modify the screen with possibly capacitative technology. I can say, for the record, that these rumours were nothing more than rumours. As far as I can tell, the hardware is identical to the model that Chippy is using. Nothing obvious has been changed.

The internal memory of the phone is 2GB, not 1GB as is mentioned on just about every b7610 spec sheet on the internet. God only knows why Samsung have fed false information to the retailers there… It will be funny to see how long it is before the retailers (and Samsung!) realise they've got that wrong. There was no micro SD card bundled, like there was in other countries.

The keyboard is a joy to use. It takes a little getting used to due to the keys being layed out in a grid pattern and not staggered like they are on regular qwerty keyboards, but after a few messages, you'll be typing very fast (by mobile phone standards). It's worth mentioning that the onscreen keyboard is also very good indeed! Responsive and accurate. Not far behind the iPhone's. This is down to the touch screen. It may be resistive, but it's very sensitive and using it is usually nothing short of effortless.

Now, a few things that, I dare say, i900 Omnia users would like to know about the B7610.

Firstly the media player on the B7610 does support WMA format this time around. I couldn't get my head around why the i900 didn't support WMA, but at least Samsung have learnt from their mistakes.

Secondly and also relating to the media player, the album art system has be improved no end. On the i900, it would take ten minutes to get from your A albums to your Z albums owing to the time it took the device to render the album art. I can say, very safely indeed, that this problem has been completely corrected. The media player as a whole is a great improvement on the i900.

Thirdly, the camera. The pictures themselves are much better than on the i900. I've only had a chance to use the camera in low light situations, so I can't say anything about daylight photos, but I would imagine they will be as good, if not better than the i900. I have one pretty serious gripe with the camera though (other than the fact that my finger ends up in the lens every time I hold the device, you're not alone Chippy) and that is that the camera viewfinder's live image is of a very low quality, as is the previews of the pictures as viewed in the camera interface. When you look at the pictures in the photo gallery or on a computer, they're fine, but it's still enough to annoy me a little when I take pictures.

Fourthy, the UI. If you've seen any of the reviews or videos on the B7610, you'll know just how much the UI has been improved from the i900. If you're afraid that all this jazzing up of WM will have an impact on performance, you're wrong. The UI is slick and intuitive but does have an occasional tendancy to lag a bit. Not often enough for it to concern me. There are better looking UIs out there (I'm thinking HTC and iPhone), but I'm a sucker for function. So long as the function isn't compromised, the form is irrellevant to me, though it's worth pointing out that the UI is far from the ugly duckling.

Fifthly (this is dragging on a bit), the GPS. As I'm sitting here on my computer, my B7610 managed to get a fix on eleven GPS satellites. My i900 always struggled to find any satellites when used indoors, so I call that an improvement!

And finally, connectivity. HSDPA is only 3.2Mbps, as you may have heard. That's a step down from the i900's 7.2Mbps. In terms of UK network compatibility, all networks are covered. When I first switched on the B7610, it automatically updated the network settings to Vodafone defaults, but if for whatever reason, your B7610 doesn't do this, you can download settings directly from Samsung's website for every network in the UK, so have no fears. I'm fairly sure that O2 will be releasing the B7610 on contract as I've seen pages on their website offering support for the device. Just search "Omnia Pro B7610 O2" in google and you'll see what I mean.

Hope this answered a few questions, but I'm certain I've missed loads of stuff you'll want to know, so feel free to post in thie forum with your questions and I'll answer them as best I can. Keep in mind though, Chippy will be doing an in-depth review of the device as soon as he gets his upgrade to WM6.5 so if you really want questions answered, I'd recommend you wait for that review, but I'll try my best in the meantime.

In the meantime, there is a decent review on GSMArena.com and, as you may see on the site's homepage, a recent video review of the WM6.5 running B7610 has been posted by the Tracy & Matt blog.

I hope all of you with WM6.1 builds will get your upgrades soon! I'd like to tell you that you won't be disappointed… but I can't be sure because I haven't used the 6.1 build! I'm confident that you won't be disappointed!

i900 Omnia users, if you're in any doubt as to whether it's worth upgrading to the B7610, take it from me; If you have the money, don't think twice. The B7610 is considerably superior to the i900 in just about every way.

In short, it was the best £360 I've spent for a long time. I'm most pleased.

Thank you for reading and roll on the questions!

- Jacob

I've had my Omnia Pro for just over a week now and I have one or two things, good and bad, that are worth mentioning. Some of them may come as a pleasant surprise!

On the bad side; The work mode today screen is very productive but, for me, is held up by one thing. It only displays tasks and appointments that are ending on the current day. For example, let's say I create a new task that begins in a week and ends in a month, I won't see any item on the work mode today screen until the day that the task ends. On the bright side, I would think this problem is easily fixed by an update. Call me picky, but it gets on my wicky (apologies for that rhyme…). I'd love to know if anyone else has this problem.

On the good and bad side; The phone does have flash (lite) support but it is automatically disabled when you're connecting via HSDPA or GPRS. When you connect to a WiFi network, you'll see your youtube videos and such things appearing in the Opera browser. This was a smart move in my view because, if the flash performace when connected to WiFi is anything to go by, the flash performance on HSDPA and GPRS would have been too slow to tolerate. It's on the boarder of what I'd call acceptable when you use it with WiFi.

On the very very good side; Did you know that the Omnia Pro B7610 has a magnetometer/electronic compass built into it? I would doubt it. Samsung don't mention it on their spec sheets or in their manual and there are no programs available to Windows Mobile devices that utilize magnetometers. So… what evidence have I got to say such a thing? Those of you lucky enough to have a B7610 close-by: Open your file manager, go to the windows folder and scroll down until you see an .exe titled "CompassTest". What you'll see is, as you'd imagine, a compass test screen. As I said, there are no applications that can utilize it just yet, but Samsung were surely thinking of the future when they stuck it in there. Cool, huh? (don't ask me how I found it… I was bored to death in a lecture)

As for the email app text size… I haven't a clue how to change it… Good luck with that, Chippy!