The phone that's thrice the price of an iPod

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 29 October 2006 18:43

Your IT - Entertainment

Ever wondered what a mobile phone from Bang and Olufsen would look like? Armed with Samsung’s technical expertise, they’ve applied their design brilliance to creating one of the most unique mobile phones ever seen. The name? Serene. The price? US $1275.

Yes, you read right. At nearly $1700 Aussie dollars, this is no pre-paid phone that you can buy from the post office. It’s also more than triple the cost of an AUD $499 80Gb 5G iPod Video, but just as the iPod can’t make calls, so the Serene from B&O does not have an mp3 player.

What it does have is simplicity at its heart. It’s a mobile phone designed for one thing: communications. As such, there’s little in the way of mini-computer smarts. What you get is Bluetooth, a digital camera, the ability to make voice calls, send SMS and MMS messages. And that’s about it.

That means no video calls or recording, no games, no web surfing, no downloadable ringtones, no built-in digital TV tuner, or sports accelerometer, or FM radio or any of the modern features found cluttering (some would say) many modern phones today.

Sadly there’s no speakerphone either, but the phone sound quality when next to your ear is said to be superb, unlike any mobile phone you’ve heard before. It also has a range of very cool sounding ringtones, 12 in total, with single note bells or xylophone style wood blocks to calm and attract you to answering the phone, instead of alarming you.

Serene has a very intriguing and unusual design. Not round or oval, and not quite fully square either, the phone just looks very different. It stands out. According to B&O, “Serene consists of two equal parts that are tied together by a beautifully crafted aluminium hinge”. And when you open it up, it stands out even more.

The display and microphone are placed in the lower shell in a landscape orientation and the circular keyboard and loudspeaker is placed in the upper shell with an elegant thumb operated wheel in the middle taking care of all primary operations. That means when it’s open, it’s the keypad that is next to your cheek – the screen is on the lower flip.

B&O says this is so sweat or makeup doesn’t mar the screen, although I suppose it’ll be marring the keys and the click wheel instead. Whether or not you can accidentally hang up on someone this way is also unknown, but surely would have been thought of as part of the design process.

The phone’s screen can be flipped 180 degrees, but you can’t make calls this way, as the speaker and microphone remain in the same place, the speaker with the keypad and the microphone near the screen.