Samsung and Bang & Olufsen unveiled the new Samsung Serenta today. The Serenta was designed by David Lewis, who does many projects for Bang & Olufsen. The phone released as the Samsung Serenta was rumored while in pre-production to be called the Serene 2 or the F310 Serenta. In practice, it leans a bit more toward hi-tech music player than traditional mobile phone. The Samsung Serenta is the successor to the Samsung Serene which gained a lot of press for its exotic design, but failed to gain popularity due to its $1500 USD price tag.

At first glance, the GSM and HSPDA enabled Serenta appears upside down, with the touch screen display at the bottom of the phone with a large navigation wheel at the top. It is with the Navigation click wheel that you accept or end a call, browse play lists, type messages and such. There is also a “back” and a “C” key on the up and down positions.  Directly beneath the wheel are the “music” and the “more” context keys.

The Samsung Serenta was obviously built with an eye toward fashion over function. Its specifications include a square 256K color TFT display, a 4 GB internal memory so you can store lots of music or other data and Bluetooth functionality. Missing is any WLAN capability and there is no memory slot; but users of this phone will probably not find it to be any big deal. I was somewhat surprised to see that there is no built in camera. The Serenta comes with pre-installed nature themed ringtones, but you can set any mp3 track to be a ringtone.

It is as a music player that the Samsung Serenta really shines. When in Music mode, the display turns red, changing from the blue display when in phone mode.  The Serenta has a built in speaker system that performs incredibly well, delivering high quality with no distortion at even the loudest volume settings. This is largely due to the Bang & Olufsen-patented ICEpower amplification. The stereo speakers come into view when you slide the lower part of the phone up. Also included is a built in stand, so you can set the phone upright on your desk or table. Track organization is done with the simple BeoPlayer software. It searches and organizes all your tracks on your PC and imports them to your Serenta. However, the Samsung PC Studio is used to sync your contacts, appointments and messages with MS Outlook.

All that music power comes at a cost in terms of size, with a thickness of 19.7 mm and a hefty weight of 136 g. As to the financial cost or availability, there is no word yet from Samsung.