Sagem Puma Phone early review: Speed of the puma

The Puma Phone is the trainer titan's first mobile, and it's pouncing with a touchscreen sporting a solar charger and a bright, bold user interface

Flora Graham

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Flora Graham

Feb. 16, 2010 5:00 a.m. PT

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The Puma Phone is eyeing us up like a juicy-looking Canadian hiker, and getting ready to pounce on to our shelves. The phone is a touchscreen handset with an innovative user interface and a solar charger on the back.

Puma has taken some risks with the phone's user interface, chucking the boring little icons and menus that we've come to expect on everything from smart phones to watch phones. The Puma Phone has a bright red UI that uses huge, bold icons to connect you with features such as the Web browser and Google maps. You also have your choice of a handful of less-red themes on board, if you're not a fan of the colour.

The Puma Phone also has a host of Puma-centric features, such as links to Puma's news feed, which focuses on the company's sponsored athletes, such as Olympic sprinting god Usain Bolt.

A 71mm (2.8-inch) capacitive touchscreen fills the face of the Puma Phone, while the back sports a 3.2-megapixel camera with an LED photo light. There's also a smaller VGA camera on the front for video calling, an FM radio and support for heaps of music file formats.

A microSD memory card slot and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack make the Puma Phone a possible pick for music lovers.

We haven't seen much of Sagem recently, but it's the company Puma roped in to produce the phone. Sagem tells us the Puma phone may be the first of several branded phones it will be whipping out, following a company revamp.

If you're tempted by the Puma, look for it in the first week of April, launching unlocked and SIM-free from Puma stores and on contract from UK networks.

We took the Puma Phone for a walk on our special puma-leash, so click 'Continue' to check out its claws.

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The are three home screens -- the main one offers three of your favourite shortcuts as huge icons, while the others divide features into sport and lifestyle categories.

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You'll have to have a good memory to sort out what all the bold icons refer to -- everything from the phone dialler and Web browser to more obscure options such as a pedometer.

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The Puma design extends to fun, bold takes on the music-player app, which shows a rotating turntable.

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The back of the phone has a solar charger, but we weren't able to test how well it pumps up the battery.

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You reveal the menu on the Puma Phone by swiping up from the lower corner of the screen, like lifting up the edge of a page.

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There's also a menu that slides down from the top of the screen, which looks similar to the Android notifications area and allows you to control features such as the Wi-Fi connection.