Want to have some real fun the next time you’re in a room with geeks and gadget freaks? Here are two words that when uttered aloud will not only get their attention, but set off hyperventilation, pupil dilation and drooling: “Apple phone.”
The Web has been rife with bogus rumors of an Apple cellphone since 2004, and each ridiculous “leak” or faked “photo” sets off a torrent of fruitless discussion, speculation and hysteria.
What does that say about current cellphones? That they’re claustrophobic and oppressively complex. That the world craves a phone that conveys, like Apple’s iPod, a feeling of beauty, elegance and instantaneous mastery.
This week, a cellphone matching that description has finally arrived — but it’s not from Apple. Its design comes from Bang & Olufsen, maker of expensive, hyper-stylish stereos and cordless phones, and its guts come from Samsung.
The phone is called Serene. It’s a radical departure from any cellphone you’ve ever used before, mostly in a good way. One of the bad ways, alas, is the price. Promise you won’t stop reading when you find out? It’s $1,275.
For that money, the company promises, you don’t just get a phone. You get “discreet, pleasurable interaction,” a device “to have, to hold, and to communicate with.” (Is this a phone or a personal ad?)
You know something unusual is going on the minute you pick this thing up. It’s a clamshell design, but the shell is square instead of oval — in fact, not even crisply square, but slightly trapezoidal, with subtly bulging top and bottom surfaces. If you’re concerned about projecting masculinity, the Serene may not be the phone for you; the common object it most resembles is a makeup compact.
The jet-black surface is made of hard plastic, but it has an otherworldly, velvety softness. It contrasts nicely with the shiny silver of the hinge, a two-cylinder affair with “Bang & Olufsen” in gray lettering on one hump and “Samsung” on the other.
So what do you get for your $1,275? Some wicked engineering, for starters. The Serene is the world’s first flip phone with — no joke — a power-assist clamshell. You just nudge the thing open or closed, and a tiny internal motor takes over, pulling the halves fully apart, like a butterfly’s wings, or all the way shut, with the faintest whirring sound.
Could you have opened the clamshell manually? Sure. But a power liftgate on your phone — how cool is that?
