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Some of us might be a little bit young to remember Sagem (http://www.sagemwireless.com) mobile phones but back then, it was quite easy to spot them around town. While the brand has now slipped into obscurity in our market, the French telco company are actually doing fine in its home continent of Europe and has just unveiled their latest device - the Puma Phone.

Scheduled to be released in April 2010 throughout greater Europe, the smartphone is the brainchild of Sagem and the well-known sports lifestyle company Puma (http://www.puma.com). In a glimpse, it may look just like any other touchscreen smartphone out there - minus the Puma logo, of course - but turn it around and you will see a set of solar panels integrated directly to its back for fast battery charging.

While the solar panels has added a touch of sleekness to the phone, they are only able to churn out enough power for 15 minutes of talk-time or two hours of music playing for each hour under the sun. Clearly, it is not able to replace your normal phone charger but we reckoned that it could be quite useful during emergency moments.

So far, there is neither official price for it nor any dates for releases outside of Europe. Check out more key features of the Puma Phone right after the break or at its official website (http://www.pumaphone.com).

[Source and image: Engadget]

Key Features of Puma Phone

- Integrated solar cell, with charge indicator
- Touchscreen: 2.8 inch thumbable screen with 240 x 320 QVGA resolution and TFT wide viewing angle- Camera: 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash and x6 zoom; Bluetooth
photo sharing
- Video: VGA video call camera; full screen video playback, with video recording and streaming and progressive video download
- Music: wide range of music formats with playlist support and FM radio
- Localisation: GPS, compass, geotagging, routing and mapping
- Sports: pedometer, GPS tracker and stopwatch
- Internet: Open internet browsing, with WAP Push
- Messaging: Mobile email client and mobile web mail notification; instant messaging; MMS and SMS
- Connectivity: HSPA and W-CDMA/EDGE/GPRS/GSM; Bluetooth; USB 2.0
- Battery life: Talk time up to 5 hours with 350 hours stand-by time; video call time 140 minutes; music player time 24 hours; video player time 5 hours
- Physical: Tablet form factor; 115g weight and dimensions of 102mm x 56mm x 13mm