Samsung recently released its unique and expensive Serenata mobile phone in Hong Kong, offering users there the chance to experience the latest music-meets-phone technology.

Officially announced at the end of last year, Samsung Serenata is made in collaboration with Bang & Olufsen, the legendary Danish company that manufactures audio and electronics products, hence it's one of the best music phones currently on the market. Besides this, the handset has an exquisite design, coming with a weird slider form factor and an unusual music control pad.

Samsung Serenata packs a hi-fi stereo speaker that leverages on Bang & Olufsen's ICEpower technology for delivering what Samsung calls a "breathtaking acoustic performance". Moreover, the handset has a Music player with an easy to use interface and support for MP3, WMA and AAC formats and comes with no less than 4GB of internal memory - quite enough for storing about all the music a user might want to have while on the go.

The rest of the features included in Samsung Serenata are: a 2.26 inch TFT touchscreen display with 240 x 240 pixels and 256K colors, a simple to use interface, tri-band GSM connectivity with EDGE, plus 3G/HSDPA (for high data transfer speeds), stereo Bluetooth with A2DP, USB 2.0, email and Web capabilities, scheduler, voice memo and a 1000 mAh battery (providing up to 3 hours of talk-time and up to 220 hours of stand-by time). The handset doesn't have a photo camera, but it doesn't need one anyway, as it's a phone that "shines" through its music capabilities.

Samsung Serenata weighs 136 grams and, when not slid, it measures 109.5 x 63 x 19.7 millimeters. A bit too thick, but the Serenata is no usual mobile phone, so we can't really say this is a downside.

The new Samsung Bang & Olufsen handset is now available in Hong Kong for 13,888 HKD (about 1,780 USD or 1,145 Euros).