A new meaning to the car-branded phone concept

Aug 9, 2007 14:40 GMT  ·  By

Combining two famous brands together in order to release a product with a double success is not an unusual practice. In this case, the A9 Audi TT name receives nothing from the fame of this phone's producer.

In fact, none of the two brands actually show their logo on this device, making it look more like an orphan product. The handset manufacturer is Chinese and has used the car producer's name and design line in order to gain some notoriety. They have managed to reach this performance even without using it too much, as the mere concept of a mobile phone with the shape of a car is enough for being out of the ordinary.

The car-phone has sizes which make it unsuitable for carrying around in a pocket, at 49 x 110 x 35 mm. Still, it looks just like a toy when placed on a table, as it hints nothing of its mobile phone capability. Still, when flipped, the device reveals a 2.2 inch 260k color touchscreen also capable of handwriting recognition.

The handset also brings on board a 2 megapixel camera, although it is capable of shooting images only at a low quality. One impressive aspect is that it also comes with 10 MB of internal storage space and a miscroSD card slot if and when that proves to be insufficient.

We have seen car-branded mobile phones before too, but none has managed to come this close to the "car" idea as this new product. It might be interesting to show up talking about the fact that many people would rather consider it to be your son's toy car: a mobile phone. Still, after the child in you gets tired of playing around with the new phone, it might be time to switch back to more serious devices.

The A9 Audi TT phone is available only in China at this time and is surely bound to stay there, with no perspective on crossing the borders.