O2's music phone – the XM

With all the hype surrounding the upcoming launch of the Motorola/Apple iTunes phones it is easy to forget that there are other music mobiles out there. One of the smartest comes from UK network O2 which has just unveiled its debut dedicated music handset – the XM Designed to work seamlessly with O2’s over the air music downloads service the XM apparently lets users search, preview, download and play the latest tracks direct to their mobile.
The tracks are available in the AAC+ format which means that the 64MB memory card that comes with the mobile can hold up to 64 songs. Incidentally O2 Music currently has 185,000 tracks available for download.

The phone itself is a neat looking compact clamshell, which we suspect was made for the network by BenQ. It features an integrated 1.3 megapixel camera, tri-band functionality and a Video and Audio Player as well as access to O2’s Active wap services.

O2 also claims it is the first GSM/GPRS mobile to be brought to the market with Intel technology on board – though we have our reservations about that. O2 XM costs £199.99 on Pay & Go or from free (dependent on tariff) for pay monthly contract customers and is available in O2 UK stores or online from www.o2.co.uk/.