Samsung and B&O team up for Serenata music phone

Samsung has teamed up with Bang & Olufsen to produce a stunning luxury 4GB music phone, the Serenata.

Designed by Bang & Olufsen's in-house team, the Serenata combines an eye-catchingly unusual but elegant rounded design with cracking music features and state-of-the-art mobile operation.

The handset is packed with 4GB of solid state memory (plus an additional 25MB), capable of storing 1,000 music tracks, and comes with high-end music features including a built-in high quality hi-fi stereo speaker system. The Serenata can also play music through Bang & Olufsen's supplied EarSet3 earphones.

The Serenata is equipped with 3G HSDPA technology for high speed downloading, streaming and web browsing. Instead of regular key controls, It uses a click wheel navigation system complemented by "sensi-touch" control on the 2.26-inch display. The display changes colour from blue to red, depending on whether it's in phone or music mode, to make the interface more user-friendly.

The phone supports a variety of music formats including MP3, AAC and WMA files and the music player can run for 13 hours through its headset or 5 hours with the speaker . Regular mobile phone features, including email support, web browsing, stereo Bluetooth, USB connectivity, plus the usual messaging facilties.

The Serenata is the second phone resulting from the collaboration between Bang & Olufsen and Samsung, following the Serene, launched in late 2005. Its design is based on stones washed ashore, according to B&O designer David Lewis.

The Serenata will be released in November, with the price to be confirmed. But it won't be cheap.