Serene phone: fetish object

I thought we’d gotten past mobile phones as fetish objects. (That’s anthropological fetishism, not t’other kind). Apparently not if the Serene by Bang & Olufsen and Samsung is any guide.

The Serene is apparently “the purest relationship between function and form, expressing elegance and discretion” and “offers a purpose almost forgotten in today’s market for mobile technology: comfortable and convenient communication”. This is apparently achieved in a clamshell phone that opens in reverse with the circular dialling pad on the top half and the screen on the bottom, a layout that is alegedly more natural and “good sense”. One assumes that the circular dialling pad is also “good sense” which in this case may actually mean “an idea Nokia had several years ago that we’ve appropriated because it fits with the scroll-wheel”.

Opening the Serene is an event (*wink*) in itself. Not content with forcing the user through the drudgery of opening the phone manually and being unable to limit themselves to a spring a-la the PEBL, Serene has an electric motor in the hinge. An electric motor in the hinge. Madness.

Did I mention that all this comes at the bargain price of USD$1275?

Compare the Serene with the MOTOFONE. Poor spelling aside, the Motorola manages to be just as black as Serene (black being the new everything else, apparently) while having none of the tosh associated with expressing elegance and discretion and would seem to just get on with the business of being a phone. No camera, no email, no whizzy menus. Just voice and SMS. Lovely.

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Published:: October 27, 2006 / 1:04 pm

Category:: design, technology

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glen 10.27.06 / 2pm

events! haha..

hmmm, looks like something out of stargate.

what is scary, from my pov, is the description of the ‘wheel’ as ‘intuitive’. wtf does this mean? does it mean that we now have machines that can anticipate, what? movement? database selections? who you are going to call? [ghostbusters!] is this just another very subtle mode of control?

it is also very interesting that whenever an interface has to be ergonomically designed to capture a relation of ‘intuition’ it needs to have a ‘wheel’. I am thinking of the BMW bullshit and on the less ‘intuitive’ side of the spectrum of intuitive-interface is the iPod. It is a good example of how events are dissolved iinto the texture of materiality by designers, like how cattle runs get less-wide thus propelling the cattle through sheer force of perception.

Ben Kraal 10.27.06 / 4pm

The wheel is intuitive for the person using the phone. The wheel itself has no intuition.

Thea Blackler here at QUT researches what “intuitive” (person -> object not object -> person) products are. Basically “intuition” in those terms is the ways that a digital camera, say, is shaped/designed to leverage someone’s previous experience with other things to make the camera easier to understand.

For the Serene, the idea is that it’s a turny wheel thing, and people who’ve used an iPod should “get” it by association. People who haven’t should “get” it by playing with it.

Machines that can anticipate is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. In the computer-science parlance they’d be “intelligent agents” opening up all sorts of questions about unintelligent agents and where agency resides and so on. Which is, of course, lovely for people who are interested in those sort of questions and frustrating at the same time for all concerned because finding a common language or even common ground for that sort of thing is difficult.

Can I steal “events are dissolved into the texture of materiality by designers”? It’s quite lovely.

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