Hello everyone, hope you have all had a happy easter.

As always, i got a bunch of questions for you all:

How does the trade-in system work? According to what I have heard you can trade in your old products to get a discount on new B&O products you wish to buy. How much of a products value do you generally get when trading in? I've been thinking of trading in my serene (with or without the earset 2) and maybe my beosound 2 to buy the serenata. I don't expect them to pay for the whole handset, but I do want to get atleast some value for my beloved ones. I guess it's different from country to country and between dealers, but I would just like to know some general percentage.Or if they even accept these "small" products as trade-ins?

This leads me to my serenata qestions: Now that it's been a while since it's release, how do the ones of you that bought it feel about it now? I resently found out the serenata can play video files, is this feature working well? is there any file size limit for videos?

I also recently read a review that pointed out a problem I have never thought about before:that you can't press numbers during a call. Why would you want to do that you might wonder, becous I use pre-paid cards to put money on my serene. If I want to call 24 hours a day one month and not at all the next month I dont want to have to pay for it when not using it. when charging i call a number and enter the numbers i got when i paid for it, but this seems not to be possible with the serenata. or is there some way to bring up the little number pad during a call?

thanks in advance for any answers

Hi Viktor,

I got a Serenata at Christmas, and have been very happy with it since. I did have one problem with it to do with transferring music from my MAC, where the Serenata developed a problem, but this was resolved with my dealer swiftly. The speaker if fine for a bit of background music, but I have other things I'd rather listen to music out loud on when I'm at home or at uni. But when listening with the Earset 3 the Serenata excels, trumping my ipod classic and shure earphones. I don't have a BS2 or BS6 to compare it to I'm afraid. Texting can be a bit of a struggle, but I'm not a prolific texter and can get by. All in all though, very happy with my Serenata.

I did try putting some videos on, you'll need to make sure they are at the correct resolution and aspect ratio (mine were 16:9 and came up letterboxed), but its not a feature I use at all now. I dont think there's a file size limit, other than you cant exceed the 3.8GB available for media on the hard drive.

With respect to a keypad during a call, I just tried it out there and couldn't seem to get one to show up, either by touching the touch screen or pushing the buttons on the click wheel. Definitely something to clarify with your dealer before you purchase.

I have no experience of trading in products, although I see no reason for your dealer not to offer to trade in your products. If not you could always try selling them in the "For Sale" section here on Beoworld, or on an auction site(ebay).

Hope this is of help, and if you have any other question's specific to Serenata just ask.

Robert. 

thanks for this great reply Robert.

One question I came to think about just now is: how hard is it to change the SIM card on the serenata? One (very) unpractical way to deal with not beeing able to use the numbers when charging the cash on the phone could be to use one of my other handsets and put some more money on it everytime so i dont have to do it that often. after all its only a 7 min walk from the store to my home so it wouldn't take to long if i find myself in need of money on it.. but offcourse it would be a bit stupid i guess. It also took a bit to long to switch from the serene to another phone when going out with the boat or other activities where i did not want to drop it in the ocean or hurt it to much.

As for video, I'm not really planning on watching full movies on it, but it would be nice to be able to do so if i wanted, like if im traveling and have some boring evenings or spend alot of time in a train or on a plane it would be great to watch some tv series or movie just to spend time, not going for the cinematic experience. Do you know if it is difficult to change the resulution of video files so that they will work with the handset?

And again, thank you for the answers, very informational (is that a word?  ) 

It's actually very easy to remove the sim card. You flip down the metal stand, slide the speaker up, remover the back cover and battery and then you can take out your sim card. Nothing too fancy. Changing over phones to top up your credit shouldn't be a problem. 

For videos, I used a program for MAC called "Handbrake" which rips from the DVD to an .mp4 file, and a variety of other file formats. You have quite abit of control over the settings, resolution etc, so you should be able to use that to rip from DVD's. Handbrake is also available for PC and Linux, and is free to download at http://handbrake.fr/ I don't think it would be difficult to chance the resolution to suit the Serenata.

Personally I don't use or plan to use my Serenata for video, I have an iPod for that.  My Serenata is primarily for music in terms of media, and of course is used daily as a phone. And it serves this purpose well, I usually listen to music on my way down to lectures, and sometimes when studying if I don't have the Beosound 3 in my dorm. At home, it does get used for listening to music through headphones, never really via loudspeaker.

Robert. 

rednik:

To call up number dial during a call, press the centre button, then tap the screen

Thanks rednik.

Robert. 

thanks for the answers.

Is there nobody who knows anything about the trade-in system?