Porsche Design Mobile Phone

Porsche Design Group is pushing further into the mobile phone world with their new P’9522 model. An update on the P’9521, the new phone is now available in Porsche Design Stores, phone shops, and other specialty stores.

The new phone keeps the similar straight shape as its predecessor. It is made from a solid aluminum block, with a piece of scratchproof glass covering the display. Porsche’s new phone is black at the front, and brushed aluminum at the back. As opposed to the flip-phone style of the 9521, the 9522 is a single piece, bar-style phone.

It comes with a 2.8-inch touchscreen display which uses an active matrix organic light emitting diode (AMOLED) to project images. The phone has GPS built in, to allow the phone to be used as a navigation device. Porsche even included a finger print reader, to prevent unauthorized people from accessing the device. A five megapixel camera, with flash, and stereo MP3 player are built in. The quad-band phone can also be used to access WiFi networks.

Unfortunately, the Porsche P’9522 cannot be used in Japan or Korea because of network compatibility issues. The new phone is on sale now.
Press Release:Mobile Phone P’9522: Purist design and technical precision

Porsche Design Group (Porsche Lizenz- und Handelsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG) is introducing its new mobile phone P’9522. The mobile phone, available now in Porsche Design Stores and in specialist shops, is blending a linear shape with innovative communications technology.

The Porsche Design P’9522 is milled from a single solid aluminum block and a single sheet of scratchproof glass, its finish is pure and sleek. The rough, raw materials used to build the P’9522 have been crafted to underscore the refined design. In combination with its quintessential black and brushed aluminum finish, the P’9522 represents the timeless and authentic design philosophy of the brand. The P’9522 has the very latest communications technology together with excellent sound and picture reproduction:

- Display. The touchscreen display makes navigating through the menus smooth, easy and intuitive. The AM OLED display ensures top quality color reproduction and brightness.

- Mobile navigation. The phone has a built-in GPS receiver for mobile navigation purposes. The 2.8 inch widescreen display makes it easy to read the information on the screen.

- Finger print sensor. Access to personal data is secured by means of a sensor which identifies the user’s finger print.

- Pictures and video. The P’9522 is equipped with a stills and video camera with auto focus. The camera has a resolution of five megapixels, integrated flash and digital zoom.

- Music. The P’9522 is equipped with an MP3 player for music, ring tones and voice reproduction in stereo quality.

- Internet. Speedy internet access is assured, thanks to the P’9522’s WiFi technology.

- Quad band. This is a quad band cell phone, compatible with most global networks (with the exception of Japan and Korea).

The P’9522 thus reflects the brand’s clear design language and lives up to its promise of blending together high quality materials, top of the range workmanship and innovative technology.

Porsche Design is a luxury brand with particular focus on technically inspired products. The brand was founded in 1972 by Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, and since then its products have stood for functional, timeless and purist design. The product portfolio includes classic men’s accessories, a sport and fashion collection as well as electronic products and a men’s fragrance range. The products are designed in the Porsche Design Studio in Zell am See, Austria, and sold worldwide in own stores, shop-in-shops, high quality department stores and exclusive retail outlets.

Nine Artists Photographs

The P’9522 is both a premium cell phone and a design accessory. Its pure and timeless design have provided the inspiration to nine international photographers to produce works which reflect the combination of design, luxury and technology, while at the same time preserving the style of the original artists.

The works are on display at the «Porsche Design Mobile Phone Experiences» exhibition. The traveling exhibition will take place in Paris, Lisbon, Milan, Hamburg, Moscow, Beijing, Hong Kong and Dubai between September and November 2008.

Would you buy a car made by Nokia? Perhaps, but what about a phone designed by Porsche? Aimed at the luxury end of the mobile market, the P'9521 certainly has some interesting features, not least of which is the fingerprint scanner on the front.

However, those tempted will have to have deep pockets because it has a wallet-bashing SIM-free price tag of £800.

Strengths
The P'9521 is actually a joint effort between Porsche Design and Sagem, but the Porsche luxury stamp is all over the phone. For example, the handset is hewn from a solid block of aluminium and mineral glass is used on the display. The screen is also double-hinged so you can rotate it through 180 degrees and snap it back against the case -- in this respect it's very similar to The display uses organic LED technology, so there's no backlight which helps save on power. We've seen OLED screens before that look washed out with muddy colours, but there are no such problems here. Colours are bright and vivid and the 320x240-pixel resolution means icons and text look nice and sharp.

Below the main screen sits one of the phone's key features -- a fingerprint scanner. You can set the phone up to use the scanner instead of the usual PIN lock code, or alternatively assign it to certain numbers in the phone's contact book. It also doubles as a touchpad to move through the phone's menus, but as it suffers from lag when working in this way you probably won't bother using it.

Another little trick the phone has up its sleeve is its accelerometer. When viewing pictures with the screen snapped back against the case you can change the view from landscape to portrait just by tilting the phone, just as you do with the iPod touch or iPhone.The handset is supplied with a 2GB microSD memory card which you can stuff full of tunes to play in the music player. The sound quality via the supplied headphones is pretty good, but as the inline remote (which doubles as a hands-free kit) has a standard headphone connector, you can swap them for your own if you like. When it comes to call quality, the P'9521 is difficult to fault and it also had extremely good reception.

Weaknesses
Porsche produces a car called the Boxster and that name could easily be applied to this handset because the design is ridiculously angular. In fact, the sharp angles actually make it slightly uncomfortable to hold at times. All that aluminium has also added to its weight so it feels much heavier than most clamshell phones around at the moment. The 3.2-megapixel camera has autofocus and dual LED flash so we had expected it to produce decent results, but in fact we were disappointed by the photos it takes. Colours look processed and there are too many digital artefacts present in the pictures for our liking. Also, although the phone has some neat features, such as the fingerprint scanner and accelerometer, given the ridiculously high price tag we would have expected it to support 3G and also have a better battery life. You'll get around 3.5 hours of talk time out of it which is rather anaemic for a non 3G handset.

Conclusion
The Porsche P'9521 is certainly an interesting phone thanks to the solid aluminium construction, fingerprint scanner and accelerometer. However, luxury phones need to be unbelievably desirable to justify their high price tags and we just don't think that's the case here. We'd happily pass over this handset in favour of Apple's iPhone and we'd still have a lot of change left from our £800.