Samsung, Bang & Olufsen Serenata Music Phone Showcased
Tue Oct 02, 2007 4:48 pm
Samsung Electronics and audio product maker Bang & Olufsen today unveiled their latest joint music-mobile phone, Serenata, which holds 4 GB of songs and has a number of other music features similar to the iPhone.
Photo: Samsung, Bang & Olufsen Serenata Music Phone Showcased Photo 1
Serenata is a music mobile phone focusing on sound quality. Bang & Olufsen's expertise in concept development, user interface experience, acoustic sound capabilities and design skills together with Samsung's leadership in mobile phone technology, engineering and quality have realized a new way of combining unique music and mobile experiences for consumers.
"We have high expectations to Serenata, as it is a result of our joint vision to constantly push the boundaries, and bring unique and exciting products to our customers," states Torben Ballegaard Sorensen, CEO of Bang & Olufsen.
Serenata represents an innovative approach to a personal music player. Two companies' technology and design bring the experience of digital music to quite another level for music fans on the move.
Serenata features a built-in stereo speaker system which delivers outstanding sound quality. Equipped with a built-in hi-fi speaker and outstanding bass system, the phone delivers high quality sound without any distortion. With this state-of-art technology, mobile phone users can enjoy various kinds of music from pop and rock to jazz and classic in the same way they would through their hi-fi system at home. Users can listen to the opera in a music quality as if they were there themselves through the integrated loudspeaker system or through the dedicated stereo EarSet 3.
Combining only top-performing speaker components with ingenious acoustic principles and Bang & Olufsen-patented ICEpower amplification, the Serenata gets the world's best acoustic performance. The focus has been to provide authentic music performance, with emphasis on playback of "uncompressed" music. Besides handling lossless, Serenata also handles playback in various formats, including MP3, WMA, and AAC.
As a dedicated music phone, Serenata brings special ringtones for the users who want to have unique and sophisticated sounds designed by Bang & Olufsen. The sound achieved from a triangle, wind chimes, various types of glass and different types of woods will offer beautiful sounds to match any situation.
Serenata is a pocket-sized music mobile phone with an organic rounded design. "I often take long walks by the sea where I live," explains Bang & Olufsen designer David Lewis, "and the shape of the nicely rounded stones that are washed to shore has always fascinated me. These stones have been carefully shaped and rounded by rolling in the water for millions of years, and they are so wonderful to hold in your hand. This was what I was looking for."
The contrast between the cool aluminium and the warm soft touch lacquer leaves an impression of elegance, slimness and craftsmanship. The unique music phone's sound quality and elegant design does not compromise the ease of use. The click wheel navigation gives users hassle-free control of music functions.
"The basic idea is simplicity and one-hand operation. There are very few actual keys. We use the wheel for all primary operation in the context sensitive menus, like dialling, writing and accessing the music lists. For secondary operation, the wheel is supported by on-screen operation based on sensi-touch technology," explains Bang & Olufsen Chief designer David Lewis.
To assist the user throughout, the display changes color depending on whether it is in Phone mode (blue) or Music mode (red). Furthermore, the large 2.4-inch color LCD display developed by Samsung allows Serenata to show album covers in an excellent resolution and facilitates on-screen navigation. Also, the innovative mobile phone features sensi-touch to enhance the usability.
"Besides the color-coding and intuitive user interface, we try to help the first-time user with a 4-minute simulation tutorial, which is played in the display, explaining some of the most frequently-used functionality," Bang & Olufsen Business Manager Brian Laursen explains.
To enhance the usability, Bang & Olufsen has developed BeoPlayer, a simple software that can access and organise all music files on the PC and conveniently transfer them to Serenata. Also through the Samsung PC studio, the users can synchronise the contacts, calendar and to-do list from their computer onto Serenata via Microsoft outlook.
With Samsung's leadership in mobile phone technology, Serenata represents a unique harmonization of music and mobile phone features.
To offer enhanced multimedia functions, Samsung brings High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) connectivity to Serenata. With 3.5G connectivity, users can enjoy full multimedia features including music and video, e-mail, MMS and instant purchase and download of music tracks. Also the phone features a 4 GB solid-state memory for storing digital music and data.
Featuring hi-fi speakers to deliver high quality sound reproduction and telephony, Serenata also provides a portable conference call feature, enabling multiple users to have a phone call a few feet away from the mobile phone.
Playback of music without disturbance from incoming calls or messages is made possible via the PureMusic function. Serenata still receives calls in the answering device or messages in the inbox, but doesn't disturb users while listening to the music.
Bang & Olufsen Serenata Specifications
- 3G/GSM R/F band, GSM 900, 1800, 1900 and HSDPA 2100
- Dimensions - 63 x 109.5 x 19.7 mm
- Weight - 136 g
- Battery capacity - 1000 mAh
- Talk time - Up to 3 hours
- Standby time - Up to 280 hours
- 2.26-inch 256K-Color TFT-LCD (240 x 240 px)
- Bluetooth
- USB Version 2.0 (High Speed)
- WAP 2.0, Access NetFront v3.2 Browser
- SMS, MMS, EMail (POP3, IMAP4, SMTP, SSL, TLS, OTA E-Mail Settings Configuration)
- Memory - 4GB + 25MB (1,000 tracks MP3)
- 1,000 contacts
- Speakerphone
- PureMusic (flight mode)
- Offline playback - Up to 5 hours (speaker), up to 13 hours (headset)
- Audio codec - MP3, AMR (Voice Tag), AAC, WMA, WMA Lossless 9.1
- OMA DRM, Windows Media DRM
- True bass
