Samsung Omnia 7 review

Microsoft's heritage in the mobile phone space (and one of the key things than kept Windows Mobile alive for so long) was the ability to work on documents and projects on the go, and that functionality is back with a vengeance on the Samsung Omnia 7.

Be it simply looking at a document from an email without needing to switch between multiple applications, or doing some deep editing of a PowerPoint presentation, it's all on offer through Windows Phone 7.

The front-facing application is OneNote – this is basically a really advanced note taking application that can be synchronised with the SkyDrive on your Windows account, or on a Microsoft SharePoint if you have one set up for your company.

You can add in text, pictures from the camera, sound you've recorded – basically if you're after a complete way to record a meeting, this is an excellent way to do it.

Word and Excel support is similarly excellent – for instance, in Word you can look at the whole document in overview, or press a button to simply see the starting phrase of each paragraph, which can make shooting through a 90-page document on your handset that much easier.

You can obviously edit said documents with ease too, by tapping the edit key. You can also track changes on collaborative docs with a specified user name to make it easy to show what you think. Or swear at people in real-time, which is hilarious in all work-based instances.


PowerPoint is also ridiculously good too; simply open it up and you can alter a project, add text, move the slide around with a slick drag and drop principle, basically all the things you can think of in a really nice manner.

You can also subscribe to web-based PowerPoint presentations and follow them real time on your phone – we didn't get the chance to try out this functionality but it sounds ace.

What's hard to describe here is how it works – the foibles, the weaknesses, the things that don't impress you as much – and the reason is there is none.

The Windows Phone 7 platform on the Samsung Omnia 7 is almost perfect in the way it operates the tasks you ask it to, and that's never more apparent than in the intensive Office Suite.