Puma Phone officially announced

After all that teasing, and some rather strange YouTube videos, Puma has finally unveiled the Puma Phone in partnership with Sagem Wireless.

Promising not to be like “all those other phones”, the Puma Phone certainly stands out if not just for the fact it has a solar panel on the back for wireless charging on the go. You’ll even be able to see how much extra juice you’ve managed to rack up by solar charging within the interface. We’d imagine it gives you a warm feeling inside.

Puma has made it clear this phone is not for business users, but for lifestyle – and its features demonstrate that.

Described as an active smartphone, you’ve got everything you’d expect such as a 2.8-inch “thumbable” touchscreen, 3.2 megapixel camera (plus a front-facing camera for video calling), Bluetooth sharing, 3G connectivity (but no Wifi) and GPS.

However it’s the added extras that really make this phone what it is. On its sporty side you can expect an analogue stopwatch, GPS run tracker, GPS bike speedo, pedometer and ooh, a yachting compass.

On its more lifestyle side, there’s the scratching turntable app that you can actually use to scratch your MP3s, easy sharing of photos between Puma Phones where you actually see the photo leave one handset and arrive at the other, and a sarcastic calculator, which apparently “has fun with you” while giving you the answer. Interesting. Oh and you can also bring up Dylan the Pumaon your screen whenever you want to. Sold.

Puma says that the heart of this phone lies in the Puma World Portal – a carousel-based menu on the device that gives you easy access to multimedia content from puma.com, download apps and even buy Puma products.

It’ll be available both in Puma stores and through network operators from the first week of April. We’re just about to go and get our paws on it (geddit?) so keep an eye on Stuff.tv for hands on snaps and first impressions shortly.