Serene is a

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive telephone call, calls over a radio freq ...

produced as a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

between

Samsung Electronics Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of the Samsung chaebol, a ...

and

Bang & Olufsen Bang & Olufsen (B&O) is a Danish high-end consumer electronics company that designs and manufactures audio products, television sets, and telephones. It was founded in 1925 by Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen, who designed a radio to work with al ...

. It was released in the last quarter of 2005 in Europe. It was available in select stores throughout the world and cost $1275 (~€1000). A successor to the Serene called the

Serenata In music, a serenade (; also sometimes called a serenata, from the Italian) is a musical composition or performance delivered in honor of someone or something. Serenades are typically calm, light pieces of music. The term comes from the Ital ...

was announced and released in October 2007. It features a slide out speaker and has a heavy focus on the music functions of the handset. Serenata retailed for $2000.

The joint venture

Bang & Olufsen and Samsung formed the joint venture with the aim of competing in the high end mobile phone market, primarily competing with several handsets from

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finlan ...

. The partnership has drawn on the design strengths of Bang & Olufsen and Samsung's mobile phone technology enabling Bang & Olufsen to re-enter the mobile phone market after an absence of several years and Samsung to expand into premium mobile phones. It is not the first time that Bang & Olufsen has worked with other companies to produce mobile phones. Notably the BeoCom 9800 was produced with

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is ...

and the BeoCom 9500 was produced in partnership with

Ericsson (lit. "Telephone Stock Company of LM Ericsson"), commonly known as Ericsson, is a Sweden, Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company sells infrastructure, software, and services in ...

Handset Aims

Like most Bang & Olufsen products, the phone is industrially simplistic. The concept of the phone was brought down to pure

communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqu ...

and, although the phone can facilitate voice calls, text messages, multimedia messages and take pictures, its

camera A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with a ...

is only 0.3

megapixels In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the ...

and common, often expected, features of many common phones, such as

games A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (su ...

are not present.

Handset Design

The phone consists of two halves on an

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in AmE, American and CanE, Canadian English) is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately o ...

hinge. The hinges have an internal power assist motor to help open the phone completely. One half features a circular keypad with an

iPod The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes ...

-style scroll wheel, and the other features a

liquid crystal display A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly but ...

. The handset was designed so that for standard use the screen is at the bottom of the phone, and the keypad is on the half that flips out. This was for two reasons: It stops the phone from getting greasy when you talk, and it also improves the weight balance while holding the phone. The handset also inverts so you can hold the phone up the other way if you so wished. There are some major ergonomic flaws in the Serene. The camera is located on the side of the phone on one of the hinges which makes taking photos hard. In addition, you must use a special screwdriver to access the battery compartment.

Technical specifications

References

External links

The Official Serene Website
* ttp://www.mobile-review.com/review/samsung-e910-serene-en.shtml detailed review of the handsetbr>Technical Specifications
{{DEFAULTSORT:Serene (Phone) Samsung mobile phones Bang & Olufsen Mobile phones introduced in 2005