Mobile phone reviews – Rated Mobiles

Sagem Puma Phone

This year’s recently-held Mobile World Congress in Barcelona saw a number of very interesting new devices, and one such was a new offering from the famous sportswear company Puma. A slightly odd thing for a sportswear manufacturer to do, most people might think, as did many in attendance at the convention. The name alone, after all, warranted a closer inspection of the recently unveiled Puma Phone manufactured by the French telecoms company Sagem Wireless.

To start it off the Puma Phone supports a range of sports functions, as you might well expect given the company’s provenance. Such functions include a pedometer, compass, GPS tracker and a stopwatch. The phone’s memory also comes pre-installed with a number of applications for accessing the Puma World portal in order to get a range of sports information.

As a device the Puma Phone packs a decent enough screen display of 2.8-inches with a resolution of 320×240 pixels. The screen also features a decent touchscreen as well as an accelerometer, allowing for smooth screen displays when transferring between horizontal and vertical views, along with an integral 3.2-megapixel camera that also includes an LED flash – great for taking snaps in low-lighting conditions – as well as a 6X zoom capacity. There is also geotagging, a music player and a microSD card slot allowing the user to upgrade their phone’s internal memory capacity. The device even boasts Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity.

Interestingly – and highly appealing to some – on the rear of the Puma Phone is a solar panel that displays a recharge-level indicator in addition to an integral solar cell for recharging. This is, perhaps, the stand-out highlight of the whole package. This excellent system even shows the number of talk-time minutes or messages that have accrued whilst the user has been using either the solar panel or as a recharge option that can be converted into point and then exchanged for official Puma merchandise through their official Website.

The phone is hardwired to support the Puma brand’s way of life and appears sporty and outdoorsy from the very first glance. It might seem rather like a fashion accessory, but does pack a decent range of lifestyle features including up to five hours of talk-time (which is dependent on your network type), 24 hours of music playback and up to five hours of film playback. Puma’s CEO, Jochen Zeitz, stated that ‘Puma’s main aim is to blend together the treble influences of sport, lifestyle and fashion, and the Puma phone reflects the joy, spontaneity and individuality that Puma is well-known for’.

These aims are clearly carried by some of the phone’s previously-mentioned features, such as the stopwatch and pedometer – perfect for outdoor sports enthusiasts. There are also routing and mapping apps for those addicted to the outdoors as well as a compass. This is a phone definitely staying true to its manufacturer’s sporty roots, and the features and image will doubtlessly appeal to the legions of sports fans out there. There are also a wide range of music formats with a fully supported playlist and FM radio embedded in the Puma Phone in addition to a VGA video call camera, which might come in handy to instantly compare notes with your training buddies after a hard session.

The device even offers an excellent Internet surfing experience, with open browsing and WAP-Push. There is a well-equipped mobile e-mail client and instant messaging through both MMS and SMS. The phone is slight enough to carry comfortably whilst out and about too, weighing only 115 grams and measuring 102x56x13 mm. There are currently no details with regards to release prices, although the phone is predicted to come into shops in Europe and online in April.