The Samsung Omnia Pro B7330 Pro Scala has lived up to its early potential for me over the past few days and proved to be a workhorse capable of undertaking multiple tasks when it needs to and doing so with just enough power and practicality to make it a worthwhile investment. The main competitor to the B7330 is the HTC Snap and an identical price point, this makes the decision hard. At the end of the conclusion I will try to see which of these two just edges past the other, but first we will look at each feature of the B7330-

Keyboard- the keyboard is one of the better front facing QWERTY efforts on the market and after some familiarisation time it feels quite natural to use. It is not at the BlackBerry Bold level, but in my view is better than the Palm Pre and HP variants.

Screen- it works well in all conditions and is an above average effort. The size suits the design of the phone which is not always the case and it is capable of displaying ‘just’ enough data at one time to make it is usable business device for document handling etc. This is not a criticism of this phone, but I would like to see more touch screen phones with front facing keyboards hit the market. It would offer the best of both worlds and offer much more flexibility than is currently on offer. We tend to either have keyboard or touch and not a lot in between unless you include sliding keyboards from behind the screen.

General Performance- the capacious memory bodes well for storage, but it has been difficult to find exactly where that memory is. When I check the memory info tab I get 168MB of RAM and 306MB of storage. I will double check the specs because I can see it listed, but not happening in real life. The processor is listed as an ARM1136EJS which also means little to me although I ‘think’ it runs at 528Mhz. This sounds good for Windows Mobile Standard and I would say that it just about copes with everything that is thrown at it. In a time where 1Ghz processors are capable of doing more than what is possible now we come to expect blistering performance all of the time, but the B7330 is fast without being blisteringly quick.

Connectivity- no problems here. Everything a business user needs is included and I found all aspects from the GPS to the Wi-Fi to perform as needed. For a device this small to include HSDPA at 7.2 Mbps in quad band configuration is special on its own, but the next bit makes the inclusion even better.

Battery- the 1500mAh battery does a great job of powering this phone through the most demanding of tasks and I still haven’t charged it. The first two days it was left alone due to work commitments, but I still came back to a 90% charge and seemingly almost everything else I have done with it has not made a big dent. It’s hard to tell, but I would put it close to the Bold 9700 in terms of battery performance and that is very impressive for a device running a more demanding operating system.

Media- this phone is not targeted at media functions specifically, but care has been taken to produce a passable music, photo and video experience. The lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack says a lot on any phone and it is true that most users of a 2.6” screened phone are not looking for media as a priority, but I found the music quality to be passable although not at the level of most of the competition and video playback is also good for playing back quick clips. I’m not convinced you will be wanting to watch full length movies on it, but then most would not expect to.

Voice- call quality is very good and I had no signal issues at all. I can’t say that about many Windows Mobile devices, but Samsung has definitely managed to create a smartphone that handles the voice side very well indeed. The keyboard is extremely useful for voice calling and finding contacts quickly and it is not that far off the later Blackberry phones in this area.

Software- Windows Mobile Standard is showing its age a little, but the recent update to 6.5 has done more for this version than the Professional offering in my view. The interface is slick and everything moves around swiftly. You still have to deal with lists or icons to get to apps, but there is more than a feeling of HTC in this device. Don’t tell Samsung I said that.

Conclusion- the B7330 is a superb phone in many areas and because of this it builds into a complete unit which is capable of being used for a variety of tasks. It does not attempt to stun you with fancy gimmicks and a fashionable design, it has no pretentions of burying the Windows Mobile OS beneath layers of graphics and because of this you end up with a seriously capable phone which is much, much better than I ever expected. Is it better than the HTC Snap? I would say it is, but the design of the Snap is better and the Inner Circle feature is exceptional. There is little to choose between them. But I would go for the B7330.

Available from Clove for £270.25.