O2 launches a clock, with an mp3 player, radio

AT THE O2 WIRELESS Festival in London, the firm announced its latest, 19 months in the making, mobile phone - The Cocoon.

Essentially, it's a white clamshell phone when upon clamming up has a blue scrolling LED on the outside of the casing displaying the time amongst other things. This with a range of features all aimed at the "style-led" consumers; music player, FM radio, 2 megapixel camera, 2GB internal storage and expandable to another possible 2GB.

For the rest of us - it is a 3G handset with quad band capabilities, with five hours of talk time and 350 on standby. The OS behind the Cocoon is BREW by the ever-in-the news Qualcomm, with some touches to the UI by the phones outsourced designers. This is their second phone by Pantech, the first being the ICE released last year only on pay monthly tariffs.

The new mobile has been designed with the launch of the O2 Arena (formally Millennium Dome) in mind. This was from a brief given to the phone's collaborators and designers, Streative of Amsterdam, and Syntes Studio of Stockholm. From concept to fruition this has taken 19 months to design and produce, with most of the effort being in the hands of those mentioned above and not Pantech.

Syntes confirmed that they're designing another for Streative and O2 at the very moment.

One of the most common secondary functions used for a phone is that of an alarm clock. With that as a concept, O2 and its partners above have turned the phone into a fully functioning alarm clock, with fancy blue LEDs outsideand everything.

O2 Cocoon - The Alarm Clock

The phone is expected to ship in August, free on a £35 monthly tariff, £129 on lesser and £299 pay monthly contract. Backing all this in September, O2 are launching £4,000,000 advertising and marketing campaign, solely around this phone. Yep, you've read this correct, solely for this phone. µ