Philips' Xenium phone gets a touch screen

(Credit: Crave Asia)

Late last year Philips made headlines with a Xenium 9@9 phone that could last for two months on standby, and the handset has another new trick in its latest version--a touch screen.

When the Xenium 9@9v makes its way to Asia next month, it will one of only a handful of touch-screen phones on the market (PDAs excluded). According to the literature, the handset uses handwriting-recognition software that converts doodles into SMS text so you can actually scribble out your messages.

The company didn't provide much information about the 9@9v's dual-SIM card feature, so we don't know if both cards can be active at the same time (like the Samsung SGH-D880), or if there are certain limitations to the secondary SIM. The 9@9v doesn't have quite the battery life of the earlier model but still claims standby time of up to one month and 8 hours of talktime on a single charge.

(Source: Crave Asia)