Ever wondered what a mobile phone from Bang and Olufsen would look like? Armed with Samsung’s technical expertise, they’ve applied their design brilliance to creating one of the most unique mobile phones ever seen. The name? Serene. The price? US $1275.

   
  Bang and Olufsen’s ‘Serene’. The most unusual phone ever!

Yes, you read right. At nearly $1700 Aussie dollars, this is no pre-paid phone that you can buy from the post office. It’s also more than triple the cost of an AUD $499 80Gb 5G iPod Video, but just as the iPod can’t make calls, so the Serene from B&O does not have an mp3 player.

What it does have is simplicity at its heart. It’s a mobile phone designed for one thing: communications. As such, there’s little in the way of mini-computer smarts. What you get is Bluetooth, a digital camera, the ability to make voice calls, send SMS and MMS messages. And that’s about it.

That means no video calls or recording, no games, no web surfing, no downloadable ringtones, no built-in digital TV tuner, or sports accelerometer, or FM radio or any of the modern features found cluttering (some would say) many modern phones today. Sadly there’s no speakerphone either, but the phone sound quality when next to your ear is said to be superb, unlike any mobile phone you’ve heard before. It also has a range of very cool sounding ringtones, 12 in total, with single note bells or xylophone style wood blocks to calm and attract you to answering the phone, instead of alarming you. 

                  
                          The ‘Serene’ when closed

Serene has a very intriguing and unusual design. Not round or oval, and not quite fully square either, the phone just looks very different. It stands out. According to B&O, “Serene consists of two equal parts that are tied together by a beautifully crafted aluminium hinge”. And when you open it up, it stands out even more.

The display and microphone are placed in the lower shell in a landscape orientation and the circular keyboard and loudspeaker is placed in the upper shell with an elegant thumb operated wheel in the middle taking care of all primary operations. That means when it’s open, it’s the keypad that is next to your cheek – the screen is on the lower flip.

B&O says this is so sweat or makeup doesn’t mar the screen, although I suppose it’ll be marring the keys and the click wheel instead. Whether or not you can accidentally hang up on someone this way is also unknown, but surely would have been thought of as part of the design process. The phone’s screen can be flipped 180 degrees, but you can’t make calls this way, as the speaker and microphone remain in the same place, the speaker with the keypad and the microphone near the screen.

The phone offers the flip so you can have the screen upwards and the keypad towards you when the phone is placed on a table, so you can compose text messages with the phone used in mini-laptop fashion. 

            
               A closeup look at the keypad and hinge

Instead of the usual phone keypad, you get the numbers arranged in a circle. In the middle of that circle is what amounts to an iPod-style click wheel to control the menu on screen. Dialling would take some getting used to, but having owned an early Series 60 Nokia that also had the numbers arranged in a dial, you do get used to it, as you do with anything you use on a regular basis.

The click wheel lets you scroll through contacts and make selections on the menu. B&O explain that they specially designed the colours, fonts, screen format and size with logical operation in mind. They chose a relatively large and wide format display to make reading and writing on the screen as pleasant as possible.

At the same time, they restricted the number of features on the handset to make it possible to limit the number of menus, which, as B&O put it, “makes the experience of using Serene both logical and intuitive”.

So, despite the click wheel, that’s likely why no mp3 player is included as it would likely have detracted from the phone’s stated goal of simplicity on communications, mixed in with the style that is B&O. Torben Ballegaard Sørensen, CEO of Bang & Olufsen explained it in the press release this way: “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.”

B&O started work on this phone in 2004 with Samsung. Given Samsung’s by-now vast experience in making mobile phone technology for the world market, competing successfully with Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, LG and all the others, it was a good choice, especially given Nokia’s entry into the luxury market with their Vertu handsets, which when paired with encrusted diamonds can cost US$60,000 or more. At that price, the US $1275 B&O Serene looks quite affordable indeed!

Another notable feature of the phone is in its opening. Once you start the opening process, a mini-motor within kicks into life to complete the opening process for you, whirring softly as it fully opens up. It’s said to be a world first. Quite what effect this has on battery life is at present unknown, but with the chosen design, having a battery within that could handle opening and closing the phone many times without prematurely going flat would no doubt have been on the must-have list.

If you must have one of the world’s most exclusive phones that will impress just about anyone you show it to, the way the very newest iPods still do (until everyone has one), this is the phone to get, as unlike the iPod, it’s a phone that won’t be owned by everyone in short order. Even the phone’s charger, with its triangular shape, looks like it’s a piece of modern art.

If you really want to make a fashion, design and technological statement, this is your phone! What are your thoughts? Would you buy a phone like this, or do you rely on the smartphone features your phone likely already has? Feel free to discuss in the comments section.

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