Samsung's Omnia series of mid to high-end smartphones debuted last year to generally positive, if slightly underwhelmed reviews. They were capable of doing so much, but the user experience tended to be a bit of a let-down. This time around, the Koreans have upped their game, with a much-improved OS in the shape of Windows Mobile 6.5 and loads of well-implemented features for a business-centred version of the recent Omnia II.

Handset

The handset is considerably chunkier than the Omnia II flagship (113mm x 58mm x 17mm and 165g versus 118mm x 60mm x 12mm and 129g), but the added thickness and weight have been offset by slightly reduced length and width, so it doesn't seem as blocky as it might have done.

The 3.5mm screen has a VGA camera (for video calls) and a light sensor (to detect when you're holding it to your ear) above it and three buttons below: call start and stop, plus an extra large menu button in the shape of a grin – Samsung might be trying to imply that this is a 'fun' business handset here, like the sort of person who wears a Mickey Mouse tie with their suit, or are we just being cynical?

On the sides are screen lock and camera shutter buttons, as well as a volume rocker, a 'mode' button and a slot for the metal stylus (uh oh!). On top are a 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD power/charge socket, both of them hidden behind plastic covers, and on the back is the slightly recessed 5-megapixel camera lens and dual LED flash.

Keyboard

The QWERTY keyboard glides, rather than slides, out to the left. We rather liked this approach – it's certainly preferable to the crashing thunk of Nokia's N97 mini, for example. There are 39 nicely sized keys spread over four rows and though they look disconcertingly flat, they are actually raised slightly in the middle which makes them easier to differentiate under the thumb.

Operating system and user interface

As we saw with the Omnia II, Samsung's widget-based TouchWiz UI has been a good fit with the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. Despite the fact that it comes with a stylus we never had cause to use it, since the latest WinMo has pretty much everything accessible via large, thumb-friendly icons and sensibly sized lists of text.

The widgets are generally useful, but don't cover everything, and you still can't double them up on any of the three home screens available. Some are a bit of a let down too, a TouchSwiz, if you will. While it's good to see the likes of Facebook and YouTube on there, the shine quickly comes off when you realise that they're only shortcuts to their related sites, rather than dedicated apps, like the genuinely useful Facebook one you can download from Windows Marketplace.

Something that's new with the Omnia Pro is the choice of 'modes', accessed by that button on the side labelled 'W&L'. 'Life' is the standard WinMo/TouchWiz interface we've seen before, with widgets accessed from a bar at the side and which you can sprinkle like confetti around the various home pages in whatever way you choose. 'Work' offers a more linear approach, reminiscent of the old WinMo Today page, with sections for time and date, updates, appointments etc. There's only one home page, which you can scroll through, and you can adjust the hierarchy so your most essential bits are at the top. Those wacky widgets are gone, replaced by more business-orientated ones like World Clock and Tasks, plus shortcut icons from the Start page.

Screen

The 3.5in OLED screen offers 480 x 800-pixel resolution with 16 million colours and looks beautifully sharp and clear but we were disappointed to discover that it's resistive rather than capacitive, which inevitably means it's not as sensitive as the likes of the iPhone have shown us it should be. It's certainly not terrible, and in general it had no trouble differentiating between our pushes and swipes, but there were quite a few occasions when presses didn't seem to register, and we had to push several times to get a response.

Browser

There's a choice of browsers on board, though it defaults to Opera rather than Internet Explorer unless you specify otherwise. Access is swift via HSDPA 3G network connection or broadband over WiFi. It's easy to use too, once you've worked out that to zoom you need to press and hold, then slide up or down. There's support for Flash video, which is always welcome, as are word search and a pop-up blocker.

Camera

The 5-megapixel camera includes autofocus and loads up quickly in a little under three seconds. It takes less than two seconds to take a snap too, which is impressively nippy. Extras include a bright 2x LED flash, 4x digital zoom, anti-shake function, six-picture multishot option plus face and smile detection. There's also one of the best panorama shots we've seen, which takes eight pictures automatically as you rotate the camera and stitches them together virtually seamlessly.

Picture quality is decent rather than spectacular – colours tend to look a little washed out and it doesn't handle bright light terribly well, but edges are generally sharp and there's not too much purple fringing.

Media

Watching videos on the bright and sharp OLED screen is a joy and there's a broad range of formats catered for, including MPEG4, WMV, H.263, Real One, DivX and XviD files.

Music is even better served, with a variety of audio enhancements including Samsung's DNSe (Digital Natural Sound engine) which features an equaliser with 12 presets which include Full Bass, Concert Hall and m-Theater Movie.

It can handle WMA, MP3, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+ and OGG files and there's an FM radio with RDS, auto scanning and six preset channels. While the sound through the supplied headphones isn't bad, it's easy to upgrade via the 3.5mm jack plug or wirelessly using stereo Bluetooth. There's also an FM radio with RDS, auto scanning and half a dozen preset channels.

There's 8GB of memory on board, which is a decent whack, though you can also add up to 32GB via microSD card.

Battery

Battery life on the Samsung Omnia Pro was pretty decent for such a highly specced phone and we managed around a day and a half of fairly heavy use before we had to reach for the charger.

The lukewarm reviews for the original Omnia series may have rattled Samsung a little, but they at least paid attention and raised the bar in almost every way. The keyboard may not be the very best available, but it's perfectly fine (and certainly easier to use than any onscreen version), the OS and interface are attractive and easy to use, the camera is a perfectly acceptable snapper, the browser is fine and there's the steadily increasing appeal of Microsoft's Martkeplace app store. If only the screen had been capacitive rather than resistive, we wouldn't really have had anything to complain about. All in all, it's a very serious contender for the most fun you can have with a business phone.