Design:
The Bang & Olufsen Serene is a unique looking clamshell, flaring away from the hinge to the edge. When open, the profile is not a smooth curve, rather the top and bottom overlap at the hinge, creating a shelf. With a light touch, prying the edges apart to open, a motor in the hinge takes over and slowly opens the phone, which seemed cool at first, but probably isn't as neat if you're in a hurry, and the longevity of tiny, extraneous motors in consumer electronics worries us. Open, the screen rests on the lower half of the clamshell, and the numbers surround a navigation wheel. The wheel works similarly to the iPod's wheel, without touch sensitivity, though B&O used nav-wheels long before Apple. The wheel functions by spinning or clicking at the compass points, though in our brief hands-on test, we found it was easy to press the number key close to the wheel button by accident, and vice versa. On its charging base, the phone opens with the screen at the top, and numbers at the bottom.
Features:
The Serene has the most barren interface we have seen on a mobile phone in a decade. With a dichromatic blue and white menu and a utilitarian type face, the phone was not pleasant to navigate. The wheel scrolled well, making us wish there were hundreds more numbers stored on the phone we tried out to see how it handles a large phone book. The phone features a VGA camera and GPRS for data functions, both questionably low-end statistics for such an expensive phone. Unlocked, the GSM Serene retails for just shy of $1,300. To their credit, Bang & Olufsen brags that this is the best sounding phone on the market, but since we weren't able to make any calls on the phone, we'll just have to wait for our full review to see if the best sounding phone is worth such a high price tag.
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