Reviews

Samsung Omnia 7 review

We review Samsung's first Windows Phone 7 smartphone to see if it can meet the demands of business users.

8 Nov 2010

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Every Windows Phone 7 handset must have a camera button. This can be used to access the camera even when the handset is locked so that you can take a quick snap and even upload it to the web without unlocking the handset.

Like all Windows Phone 7 smartphones, and unlike most Android phones, the user interface is not skinnable. The mains screen is made up of a number of tiles, or large icons, many of which can display data. For example, the Calendar tile shows your next appointment, the Alarm tile shows that an alarm is set and what time it will go off.

Other tiles link to hubs' or collections of data or services. For example, the Pictures tile, which is a double width rectangular size, gives you access to your camera roll as well as photos shared on Facebook if you are signed in.

Samsung has added a Daily Briefing hub to the Start screen. Tap its tile and you get access to weather updates, news headlines and stock prices. Samsung has also added a photo sharing app which easily lets you upload images onto Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, MySpace, Photobucket and Picasa. 3 has added its own hub which takes you to shortcuts to favourite web sites, news headlines and some account management facilities. This lot is hardly ground breaking and there's also some overlap between Samsung's and 3's news apps, although they do at least use different wire sources for their news headlines.

Crucially important for business users are the ability to create and send email and SMS messages, to edit documents on the move, and to synchronise calendar and contacts.