What would you think of a mobile phone that wins an international product design award even before it's put up for sale? Would you eagerly wait in anticipation to buy it? If you answered "YES," then the new BenQ-Siemens S88 is for you. Announced at today's press conference in Berlin, Germany, the S88 completes the new product line-up from BenQ Mobile.

The S88 oozes multimedia from every angle. It's got an integrated 2 megapixel camera with auto-focus and 16x digital zoom, virtual 3D surround sound, a LED photolight for taking pictures under low-light conditions and MPEG-4 video support. The unique feature of the S88 is that you hold the phone in a horizontal position to take photographs - just like a digital camera. You can touch-up the photographs using the built-in photo editor - a useless feature in my opinion. The phone supports PictBridge, which means you can directly send the image to a photo printer. The integrated music player can play MP3s including the memory-saving AAC+ and AMR formats.

The unit's display is a 2.0-inch Active Matrix OLED (262,144 colors, 176 x 220 pixels). The S88 has 16MB of onboard memory. Expansion is via a Micro-SD slot. There's no 3G connectivity (unlike the EF81). You need to be satisfied with tri-band GSM with GPRS.

The BenQ-Siemens S88 will be on retail sale from the first quarter of 2006. Prices will be available locally.

Manufacturer website: BenQ Siemens

Product website: BenQ-Siemens S88