Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO preview: First look

Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO 360-degree spin

The Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO's dimensions of 112.6 x 57.8 x 16.2 mm are just a tad easier to swallow than the heft of the HTC Touch Pro2. The Samsung is also almost 20 grams lighter, but frankly, both are massive handsets indeed so the differences aren't that obvious.

Design and construction

Massive body and all, the B7610 OmniaPRO is not much of a charmer. Even the coolest finish wouldn't hide the beer belly though we've seen some do better. XPERIA ring a bell? Samsung have tried to get more creative on the rear with the red battery cover. Decent though it is, it doesn't quite match the rest of the handset's exterior and appears a bit out of place.

The large 3.5" AMOLED touchscreen of WVGA resolution dominates the front panel. The high resolution and the AMOLED technology guarantee excellent image quality, though the 65K-color limitation of the WinMo OS results in occasional banding.

The screen is pretty good actually

It's mostly visible in single color gradients and the large high-res screen makes it more prominent.

Sensitivity is decent for a resistive screen but nowhere near the experience of the capacitive-like units in Samsung S8000 Jet and the Samsung M8910 Pixon12. Samsung claim the OmniaPRO display is advanced R-type but our pre-release sample doesn't really feel superior to the company's multimedia flagships. We will wait for a final unit before we pass our judgment on this one though.

The main issue of the display is sunlight legibility. On a bright sunny day the Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO is quite difficult to work with.

Below the screen there are three hardware controls - the Call and End buttons, and the menu key (Start menu if you prefer). They're prominent enough for comfortable handling and have solid press.

The three large keys below the display

On top of the front panel are the ambient light sensor, the proximity sensor and the video-call camera. There's another sensor up there but we haven't quite figured out what exactly it does.

There's a bunvh of sensors and a video-call camera up here

The left side features the volume rocker and the mode switch. The latter is a handy control that lets you to toggle work and leisure mode on your B7610 OmniaPRO. You can assign different user interface settings each and alternate them with a single click.

The two controls on the left