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Armani phone isn't exactly dressed to kill

It's a Samsung model that's already been announced.

Mike Yamamoto Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Mike Yamamoto is an executive editor for CNET News.com.
Mike Yamamoto
Samsung

There have been a bunch of busy little bees at Samsung's luxury phone division of late. Not only are they coyly working on the release of the "Serenata" handset, the successor to Bang & Olufsen's controversial "Serene," but they're also hard at work on the anticipated Armani phone that has stirred a bit of buzz as well.

Yet the mysterious designer handset has finally been revealed--and it's apparently somewhat underwhelming. The new Armani phone made an appearance at a dealer show in Holland, according to U.K.-based Pocket-lint, and it's basically Samsung's SGH-P520 model that's already been announced. Talk about a letdown.

It's not that the P520 is a slouch--the tri-band handset has a touch screen, 3-megapixel camera and Wi-Fi connection options in a sleek iPhone-like casing--but it doesn't have nearly the wow factor of other fashion-house phones, such as Prada's, and it's certainly more mundane than Samsung's B&O experiments. But perhaps that's an important point to note: With so many partnerships in the works, maybe Samsung's designers simply ran out of ideas.