Product Spotlight: Bang & Olufsen Serene Video

Product Spotlight: Bang & Olufsen Serene Video Transcript

>> Hi, I'm Veronica Belmont, welcome to product spotlight where we take a closer look at products you want to see. Today I'm looking at the Bang and Ultra Serene fashion phone made by Samsung. ^M00:00:10 [ Music ] ^M00:00:15

>> This phone is something else, let me tell you. B and O is known for making high quality, high priced electronics, mostly audio devices. The phone itself doesn't look like any other phone I have seen here in the states at least, but the design does have some nice features. I love the soft touch finish, and the shape of the phone is very eye-catching and new, it's kind of trapezoidal. You can't go wrong with silver and black either. The phone has an internal motor for opening and closing the clamshell. Just the slightest nudge on the outside will supposedly flip it open. I don't think it's supposed to do that. Yes, but the design is practically all the phone has going for it. The cool-looking rotary cell key pad in here is cool, but confusing at best. The clear, okay, or talk functions can be used by simply pressing the wheel to the north, south, east, or west respectively. When the phone is in default mode, scrolling the wheel immediately let's you access your contact list in alphabetical order. This feels very cool to use, but it almost moves too quickly. Navigating the phone with the wheel is fairly easy. You simply rotate it to the appropriate menu option and click okay. However, it's not going to be so easy to dial by feel or even text message. That's going to take a lot of getting used to. Another thing that may be a little weird is how the key pad is on the top of the phone. They arranged it this way so you won't smudge the screen with your face. Are they insinuating that we're greasy? Sure, sometimes phones get smudged, but I didn't know it was a big enough problem that they had to flip the whole design of the phone. Here on the side you'll see some screws. These aren't the normal kind of screws that you can take off with just any screw driver. Oh no, they're proprietary screws. Which means that if you want to take the battery out or change the SIM card you better remember where you put their own tiny included tool. Another feature that they could have worked on more. It's sitting here on the side of the phone where a screw might otherwise be, which definitely makes it kind of hard to use and aim. It's only a VGA camera, which is pretty pathetic considering the price tag on this sucker. Don't worry, we'll talk more about that later. There's a host of other features like a calendar, to do list, e-mail and Web access, and a currency converter. But nothing that you wouldn't see in any other basic phone these days. There's no speaker phone, but there is Bluetooth so you can pair it with a head set. And it better be a darn fancy head set too. However, in terms of quality, the Serene does sound really incredible for calls. This phone is all about name brand and a fancy design that will turn heads. Are you ready for the price tag? 1275. That's right. $1,275. A bit much for not a whole lot of phone. I'm Veronica Belmont, thanks for watching product spotlight. For more videos check out cnettv.com. See you next time. ^M00:03:01 [ Music ]