Samsung Omnia PRO (B7610)

Another addition to the Omnia family, the Samsung Omnia PRO B7610 is a Windows Mobile smartphone with a 3.5" 480 x 800 pixel display, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard

, a 5 megapixel camera, 3.5G support, WiFi and GPS.

We don't see this format of phone from Samsung very often, the last one we can remember is the F700. It looks very much more like an HTC handset than a Samsung. Confusingly for a smartphone, this Omnia PRO comes with a "B-series" model number rather than the more usual "I-series" that Samsung smartphones tend to use. Are Samsung making this up as they go along?

Samsung have put their 800 MHz processor at the heart of the Omnia PRO B7610. Although the actual speed of the processor is not strictly dependent on the clock rate, we're pretty sure that this will be faster than the 528 MHz one in the rival HTC Touch Pro2. The large display will be ideal for web browsing, and combine this with the large QWERTY keyboard and you have an impressive looking ultra-mobile computing device.

The anticipated launch date of the Omnia PRO B7610 is October 2009, and although Samsung have indicated that this phone will ship with Windows Mobile 6.1, there should be an upgrade available to Windows Mobile 6.5 at about the time of launch.

The camera is good for a Windows Mobile device, the B7610 has a 5 megapixel unit with autofocus and dual LED flash, multishot and panoramic stitching, and video recording resolution is 720 x 480 pixels (we guess at 30 frames per second). The Omnia PRO B7610 can play back most major media files including MP3, Windows Media

and DivX formats. There's a standard 3.5mm audio socket, and media can be stored on the 1GB of internal memory or on microSD cards (up to 32GB). The B7610 also has an FM radio.

GPS is built in, and it comes with the Route 66 personal navigation package in certain regions. If you want a different SatNav package, then there is plenty of choice available for this platform. The large touch-sensitive display is ideal for use in this respect.

This is an HSDPA capable device, but Samsung are not clear about the maximum download speed, quoting it as either 3.6 Mbps or 7.2 Mbps. HSUPA doesn't seem to be supported, but WiFi is included as you might expect.

Windows Mobile comes with all the usual features, including integration with Microsoft Exchange

, a choice of either Internet Explorer or Opera web browsers, and a good set of personal information management tools. Samsung say that the B7610 will ship with the TouchWiz interface, although the press photos appear to show a plain Windows Mobile 6.5 interface.

We don't know how much the Samsung Omnia PRO B7610 will cost, our guess is that it will retail SIM-free for something in the region of €600 to €700 when it hits the streets sometime in Q4 2009.