Philips has completed the sale of its remaining mobile phone activities to CEC, China Electronics Corporation. The business, which employs approximately 240 people, had reported Q1 sales of around 55m euro (down from double that a year ago).
It’s likely that an early CEC launch will be one of the more interesting phones of 2007. The Philips Xenium range (CEC will retain the Philips branding) hasn’t made many waves yet, but scores for outstanding battery life—standby up to one month, talk time 10 hours – and now comes a new model, the X-NRG, that has a backup charge option using bog-standard AAA batteries (could be rechargeable, could be Tesco’s cheapest).
Inside the phone there’s an easy-access compartment for the emergency battery. With the high-power Energizer e2, the best-performing rechargeable battery, this can give an extra 3 hours’ talk time and standby for up to a week.
It’s described as a concept product at the moment, with a launch date in Q4. And we’d love to show you a pic, but Philips says “we cannot release images and/or pictures of the X-NRG … This is purely to prevent piracy”. There are a few snaps around the net, suggesting that the handset looks like a moderately bulky flip phone.
Inside the phone there’s an easy-access compartment for the emergency battery. With the high-power Energizer e2, the best-performing rechargeable battery, this can give an extra 3 hours’ talk time and standby for up to a week.
It’s described as a concept product at the moment, with a launch date in Q4. And we’d love to show you a pic, but Philips says “we cannot release images and/or pictures of the X-NRG … This is purely to prevent piracy”. There are a few snaps around the net, suggesting that the handset looks like a moderately bulky flip phone.