O2 has an alarming phone

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Product: O2 Cocoon
Website: www.o2.co.uk/cocoon
System Requirements: N/A
Price: £299.99 - Pay & Go, £159.99 - £25 contract, Free - £30 contract

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ANNOUNCED A few months ago, the Cocoon was created exclusively for O2 by the design team Syntes Studio and Streative. Although the fundamentals under the hood are by Pantech, with this being their second designed phone for O2. The initial brief for this phone was to tie-in the design with the launch of the O2 arena, formerly The Millennium Dome. It's aimed at that ever so annoying market demographic, the "pro-sumer". Bundled all with what such creatures might need like music player, camera, radio etc.

O2 Cocoon

The phone's black and white clam-shell design does stand out, from the first out-of-the-box impressions. Perhaps for the wrong reasons, from the outset the phone does have the look of a cheap quality build. But these looks can be deceiving. On further inspection whilst in use, the minimalist design and feel of the phone does eventually shine through. You can definitely see where its architects were coming from. It's subtle, but the phone does have its qualities in the material used for casing and keypad. However, it still does look like a communicator used by Stormtroopers in the Star Wars films to us.

O2 Cocoon - May The Force Be With You

It opens out to an acute angle, making it a tad uncomfortable when making calls. It's not an easy fit, we found when in constant use as a phone, it does feel rather awkward. This "prosumer" is not a great clam-shell user, so perhaps that's the issue. In comparison to a Motorola RAZR it appears to be extremely restraint when fully opened.

O2 Cocoon - Side View

The Cocoon is a 3G based, Quadband phone with all the other trimmings around messaging and connectivity thrown in. While it's nice providing Quadband abilities for the consummate traveller it does seem a little redundant as it's only a UK exclusive phone. From our understanding there are no plans to see this worldwide.

It boasts up to 345 hours standby time and five hours talk time. In our tests we had the phone in use for a long weekend along with a few days during the week - all without the need to recharge. This is useful enough for a phone of this ability. It does appear that the radio and music playback functions do have a major impact on the battery life.

O2 has bundled 2GB of internal memory with an extra offering of another 2GB possible via a Micro SD card. As it's aiming this for most hated made-up word in the consumer buying marketing language, the "pro-sumer", it hits a good level of storage. Good enough for a decent range of mp3s and photos, plus a nice fit to replace a flash based MP3 player.

Its two megapixel camera seems to have a slow response time when in play. This means the fluid motion seen on the phones screen when you move it is very jerky. Smoother transitions have been seen by us in far cheaper phones. This could put off you "pro-sumers", but let it not as the images taken are sharp and crystal clear especially at 1600x1200.

The O2 Cocoon supports the music file formats AAC, AAC+, WMA, MP3 and WAV. With good sound produced from its stereo speakers, either side of the screens base. As it's touted as a music phone, it's coming off here a tad limited in terms of the available popular codecs. Any solid music enthusiasts out there, the ones this phone is aimed at, will notice just that. The in-built radio does to some extent make up for the lack of abundance in codecs. Although there is no Auto Preset setting for station set-up, but it does have a good reception and even RDS.

The cables accompanying the Cocoon for recharging, PC access and earphones are all of a bespoke design. This is rare to us as most of the phones we've seen today are of the Micro USB persuasion. In saying that, it does come with a standard USB connector at the power/data cable end. It just means more cables to carry around at the end of the day. Just when we thought things were starting to get simple with just one USB cable for every need they become complicated.

The Qualcomm popular GUI, chiefly named BREW, is the OS behind this phone. It's easy to use, clear and intuitive in terms of features and functions. The designers have had an input within this too. It's just not as advanced as other phones, but it serves its purpose and that's all that really counts.

A great deal of clam-shell phones have a secondary screen activated when the phones clammed up. The design team have gone one further than that and implanted the usefulness of that screen under the outer skin. This goes to creating an non-intrusive display and a somewhat distinctive, unique looking one at that.

O2 Cocoon - The Alarm Clock

The functionality of this thing isn't limited at all. It displays who's calling, within the number or name. The time and even doubles up as an alarm clock too. As this is one of the most popular features of phones these days, hence the inclusion and special focused its shown. It even displays the contents of a text message when it arrives, but only a preview. This we found disappointing and would have like to have seen the whole message instead.

As we've said before, this phone was designed solely for O2. So it's strange that it can accept an Orange, Three and T-mobile SIM card. Besides accepting, it works well in every aspect (bar O2s own internet service). You might have noticed Vodafone missing from that list, that's only because we didn't have one of their SIMs to hand. We're confident it works well with that network too. So perhaps the possibility of worldwide sales are on the cards after all.

In Short
Initially we found the phone of a low quality build. After further inspection the look and feel surprised us, along with quelling those first thoughts. There's nice feature set, with a swanky embedded display to round things off well. They-who-shall-be-not-named will unboundedly enjoy the Cocoon.

The Good
Scrolling LED on under the skin, outer alarm clock, music playback

The Bad
Could have had more codecs for music and video, bespoke connections

The Ugly
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