A trio of fully featured handsets debut as BenQ-Siemens unveils its new brand; the EF81, S68 and S88 boast among other traits 2 Megapixel cameras, 3G and audio playback.
Unveiling its new brand at a press conference hosted today in Berlin, BenQ-Mobile is set to join Sony Ericsson as the industry's second dual-name handset maker. To retain the vast majority of handsets from Siemens' pre-merger portfolio, three new handsets were unveiled sporting a plethora of high-end features, signaling the intent of the newly formed brand to compete in the high-end space.
BenQ-Siemens EF81 hands-on impression
 It's yet another slim clamshell as BenQ-Siemens rolls out the EF81 - fortunately with a better keypad than the prodigal 'slimshell', the Motorola RAZR. It also boasts a large, bright and otherwise excellent screen, which the multimedia functionality unfortunately fails to exploit fully. 3G is also present, and in combination with Bluetooth offers snappy web browsing on the handset itself as well as for business users. Lastly, its 2 Megapixel camera is affixed in a rather unusual manner which requires users to open or close the handset in order to change views.
Specifications
The most capable of the handsets launched today is the EF81, a slim clamshell in the vein of Motorola's
RAZR V3x and Samsung's
MM-A920. Boasting a 16 mm thick magnesium chassis, it combines 3G connectivity with tri-band GSM and dual 262K colour display, the internal one of which is of the high-resolution variety. Meanwhile, the external display of the handset also doubles as a viewfinder for its 2 Megapixel swivel camera, which records video in addition to taking stills.
Other highlights of the EF81 include Bluetooth, USB connectivity and a stainless steel keypad. Additionally, BenQ-Siemens also found room for 64 MB of onboard memory and a microSD card expansion slot for making better use of the built-in media player which supports MP3, AAC+, MPEG4, RealVideo and H.263 formats.
Price and availability
Due out in March 2006 in Europe, pricing for the BenQ-Siemens EF81 has not been announced.
BenQ-Siemens S68
 At 13 mm thick, the S68 is even thinner than the EF81 - but it's also a candybar and offers a considerably reduced feature set, leading to a featherweight measure-in of 79 g. Highlights include a brushed aluminum exterior, Bluetooth and USB, to which a 262K colour medium resolution display offers an interface along with PIM and utility suites.
A tri-band GSM phone, the EF81 also harbours 8 MB of onboard memory, likely for the purpose of storing Java applications or e-mail attachments in Microsoft Word/Excel or Adobe Acrobat formats which can be viewed sans conversion.
Price and availability
Claiming up to 5 hours of talk time and up to 300 hours of standby, the BenQ-Siemens S68 is slated for availability throughout Europe in February.
BenQ-Siemens S88
 Also a candybar, the S88 raises the bar right back up to where the EF81 left off, harbouring a 2-inch, high-resolution OLED display, a 2 Megapixel camera with video support and a microSD card slot for memory expansion. The 16 MB of onboard memory is unlikely to tide users over for long as the handset is also fitted with a media player supporting MP3, AAC+, MPEG4 and H.263 formats - unless frequent use is made of its Bluetooth 1.2 and USB 2.0 connectivity.
Equipped with PictBridge support for direct-to-printer output, the S88 also sports the A2DP to allow for stereo audio streaming over Bluetooth, but leaves out the 3G connectivity of the S88 in favour of plain old tri-band GSM with GPRS.
Price and availability
To compete with handsets such as the Sony Ericsson
K750i or Nokia
6233, the S88 is expected to hit European shelves some time in the first quarter of 2006.
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