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Tuesday January 16, 2007
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 A product that I wish I would have had the chance to see while at CES 2007 comes from Bang & Olufsen, Inc.--a North American supplier of luxury home theaters and music systems. The launch of the luxury mobile phone Serene, the company's first, is due to its partnership with Samsung Electronics Mobile Business and the designer David Lewis.
Serene is definitely an unusual mobile phone. It automatically opens and closes. This is done by gently touching the phone to trigger the motor. And it even has its own 3 unique ring tones (wood, brass, steel), which are supposed to "calm and attract (not alarm) the user to an incoming call." Each tone can be set to 4 different speeds for a total of 12 different speeds. I wouldn't mind the calming ring tone feature, since I usually jump every time my phone rings. The phone also features Bluetooth, thumb-operated wheel, 2.1-inch screen and when placed in its docking station or set to Table mode, the phone's display can turn 180 degrees. Oh, and did I mention Serene costs $1,275? More details after the jump.
Weighing 110 grams, the top part of the phone houses a circular keyboard and loudspeaker; the bottom part carries the screen and the microphone. And in the middle is the thumb-operated wheel. It comes with a table charger/docking station and is supposed to offer superior speech clarity and ambient noise reduction. You'll find an embedded VGA camera, SMS / EMS / MMS / WAP 2.0, and e-mail with Outlook. Serene is available in North America now at any Bang & Olufsen store, located in select cities such as Miami, New York, and Dallas.
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May 24, 2007 1:33 PM
There is something vaguely ironic about a cell phone designed to be "serene." Hasn't the invention of the cell phone itself helped to accelerate the pace of our lives, making it impossible to ever be "unavailable"? Hard to be "serene" when you can't ever get completely away. Still, the Serene does look pretty impressive. Soothing ring tones, and a feature that closes the shell automatically so you don't have to do the work? Now that's luxury (though I am curious as to how quickly the shell opens or closes. The description on the Serena website says it opens "slowly and gracefully," and I can see potential problems with that for the user on the go). I'm also very interested in the circular keypad, a sort of throw back to days gone by. Is this the future of cell phone keypads? The Serene website says it works "intuitively," but I'm not quite sure how that applies.
June 11, 2007 11:12 PM
This seems almost "cell phone as art." Serene offers a design that seems as elegant as the purported functions seem to be - obviously designed for a very particular, and very upscale market. I'm curious about the viability of such markets. At the moment, there does seem to be a movement towards niches that promote one element or another: entertainment accessibility; easy internet communication; sophistication. Yet there are at least as many forecasters suggesting that the future cell will be an all-purpose device that fluidly unites all of these functions into a single product. No longer will we carry an Ipod, a camera, a phone, a laptop: all will be seamlessly integrated. Those two movements, one towards phones that are designed to do one thing really well, and those towards cells that are designed to do everything, seem at odds. I'm curious what the opinion here would be? For example, is the Serene limited by the fact that it doesn't offer any kind of MP3 player? Or does the sophisticated user prefer to keep his Ipod separate from his phone?
July 13, 2007 11:59 AM
thanks for article but this phone looks so BIG !1
July 27, 2007 10:45 PM
110 grams - isn't that too heavy? $1,275 - that's really expensive; more expensive than the iPhone. I wonder if there's any feature that can let user connect to the Internet. Oh yes there's WAP but does that have an EDGE feature? In what color is this phone available? Does that allow changing of casing in case I'm tired of its current casing or color? The iPhone doesn't operate unless you sign a contract with A, T & T and is very exclusive to some countries. How about in this phone?