Techno Blog

Introduction

Samsung have just released their B7320 OmniaPRO and now, just a few short weeks later, they are introducing the B7330 OmniaPRO. Some might think there is something wrong. To get straight to the point, there’s nothing wrong with the B7320 OmniaPRO. But who are we to frown at an upgrade.

Now, that’s where it gets a bit tricky. First of all, it’s not a major upgrade involving a lot of investment and effort. Plus, the two handsets will perhaps coexist peacefully serving different markets. Still, a few nice little touches make the new B7330 OmniaPRO a real treat. The newcomer is slimmer, has brilliant ergonomics and is quite keen to double its predecessor’s data speeds and boost screen size and resolution.

Samsung B7330 OmniaPRO official photo

And the big news of course is Windows Mobile 6.5. We guess the release of the B7330 OmniaPRO is meant to herald the OS upgrade rather than send the B7320 into oblivion. Actually, the latter – along with the other current Omnia handsets running the earlier 6.1 version of the OS – will at some point be upgradeable to WinMo 6.5 anyway.

Having cleared that up, we can now get on with our first look at the cute Samsung B7330 OmniaPRO. Cute may sound a bit odd for a business device, but the handset does look and feel great, and is so wonderfully compact that we couldn’t think of any other word to describe it. So, it’s a brand new WinMo powered QWERTY messenger that’s keen to serve and please the eye. Sounds worth a closer look, doesn’t it?

Samsung B7330 OmniaPRO at a glance:

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/1900/2100 MHz, EDGE class 10, HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 2 Mbps
• Form factor: Full QWERTY bar phone
• Dimensions: 114.9 x 59 x 10.8 mm, weight 107 grams
• Display: 2.62" 65K color TFT display, 320 x 320 pixels, remarkable sunlight legibility
• Platform: 528 MHz processor
• OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard
• Memory: 270MB storage, 256 MB RAM, hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
• Camera: 3.15-megapixels auto-focus camera, geotagging, QVGA@30fps video recording
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS
• Misc: Office document viewer and editor
• Battery: 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery

The Samsung B7330 OmniaPRO at ours

As you can see, there are some differences compared to the B7320 but they aren't that significant. However, what has been changed has been changed for the better, so now the screen sports some more pixels and real estate, there’s Windows Mobile 6.5 right out of the box, boosted up HSDPA and HSUPA, and a beefier battery.

Last but not least, the B7330 OmniaPRO has lost some weight and got thinner (the device measures 114.9 x 59 x 10.8 mm and weighs only 107 g) and is now much closer to the famous Nokia E71 or RIM’s BlackBerry devices. Comparing the B7330 to the E71 and the BlackBerry gang is no surprise since all these devices share similar features and perhaps potential users.

Anyways, enough talking, let's get down to it. Jump on as we explore what the B7330 OmniaPRO is made of, followed by a brief rundown of the interface.

Introduction

The Samsung W880 ups the ante with a world's first 12 megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom. Featuring a hardware Mode dial and a real zoom lever it does feel like a real camera and you may find yourself struggling to find the mobile phone under the digicam skin. Now while W880 is South Korea bound only, it's enough to give us a taste of what's coming in the shape of the rumored Samsung M8920, which should make it our way sometime next year - but with Wi-Fi and GPS on board.

Samsung SCH-W880 AMOLED 12M official photos

Designing a mobile phone (or any other portable gadget for that matter) is a balancing act - the engineers must juggle between cost, size and features, all the while being limited by the current state of technology.

Say cost doesn't matter - that still leaves only so much that can reasonably be crammed into a mobile device. Progress is made, technology advances, which results in things getting cheaper, smaller and with more features. And quite soon, things that seemed impractical a few years back can now be released as a consumer device.

This is how the Samsung W880 AMOLED 12M came to be - it contains all the mechanical elements of a point-and-shoot camera, but still has enough room left for the phone parts. It's not the first phone to achieve that but it's the first 12-megapixel one and the added 3x optical zoom and xenon flash pretty much put it on par with a typical point-and-shoot camera.

The Samsung W880 has some high-end imaging functions too - tracking touch autofocus, 720p@30 fps video recording, 3.3" big AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with WVGA resolution. That's not something you see every day on a cameras and it's top notch in mobile phone terms. Even the degree of control over how a photo is taken beats out consumer cameras, let alone cameraphones.

Now, keep in mind that the we're previewing a prototype here and it's a prototype of a phone meant for the South Korean market only and although it has tri-band GSM and support for UMTS, those are meant for roaming only - the AMOLED 12M is for South Korea and South Korea only.

So, why bother with a preview then? Well, there's a global version coming in the beginning of next year and that might actually land in a store near you. It will look just the same but will drop the T-DMB TV receiver, which has little use outside of South Korea anyway, swapping it for the more practical Wi-Fi and GPS. Supposedly, the global GSM version will be allegedly called Samsung M8920, but that has yet to be confirmed by an official source.

Samsung W880 AMOLED 12M live shots

In this preview we focus mainly on the camera - admit it, it's the most interesting aspect of the Samsung W880 and it's the camera that has us holding our breaths.

For now, we'll just concentrate on the essentials - we take a look at the hardware, next we have a video walkthrough of the interface and finally, we focus on the camera, with plenty of still photos and video samples.