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» North America Gets Bang & Olufsen's Serene
(October 2006)
Almost
a year after rolling it out in the rest of the world, Bang & Olufsen is
bringing its tiny Serene clamshell phone to North America.
Bang & Olfusen is launching its first cell phone in the North American
market: the Serene, co-developed with electronics maker Samsung. Although
B&O rolled out the Serene in international markets in 2005, the move will
put the sleek, tiny, pricey phone in the hands of American consumers for the
first time.
"We wanted Serene to become a precious item, an item that is a personal
expression of quality and convenience. The coherence to other Bang & Olufsen
products is experienced through the design, and a very simple user
operation," says Bang & Olufsen CEO Torben Ballegaard Sorensen.
The Serene is tiny clamshell phone sporting an elegant aluminum hinge. By
default, the LCD display and microphone are on the lower half of the shell
while a circular keypad and speaker are in the upper half; a thumb-operated
wheel in the middle enables access to common functions. The phone can also
be flipped around for table-top use, putting the dialing ring on the bottom
and the LCD display on top. The phone offers tri-band GPRS support (GSm
900/1800/1900 MHz), a 240 by 320 QVGA LC display, a VGA-resolution digital
camera, SMS/EMS/MMS support plus WAP 2.0, email integration with Outlook,
and Bluetooth wireless connectivity. It weighs just under 4 ounces, and
measures a scant 2.5 by 2.8 by 0.9 inches. The phone comes with a
triangular, anodized aluminum docking station/charger—an integrated motor
opens the Serene automatically when it's in the charger and it receives an
inbound call.
As with all Bang & Olufsen products, the design of the unit got special
attention, from the onscreen fonts and colors, decreasing the number of user
menus, and specially composed ringtones intended to "calm and attract" a
user, rather than alarm them. As you might expect from a home-theatre and
audio maker, B&O also paid attention to sound quality and speech clarity.
Bang & Olufsen will be offering the Serene in its North American retail
outlets at a suggested price of $1,275 (yes, you read that correctly)
beginning in November; the Serene will come with the docking station and
travel charger.
Reference: digitaltrends
