Is PUMA Phone the next iPhone killer?

Has PUMA, the popular sports brand, found a new prey going by the name Apple? Unlike the iPhone, the PUMA phone’s release was quiet. Being only released in Europe — in places like Italy, France, and Germany, to name a few — we haven’t seen much of it over here in the States. But I like this phone, and for some people, I even think it could be a potential “iPhone Killer.” What do you think? Check out the following:

What’s its focus?

It’s for people who do sports, so they can do them better. It’s for people who like sports, so they can follow their favorite teams more easily. Lastly, it is for people who don’t like sports, so they can… um… call or text other people who don’t like sports and talk about how lame they are. PUMA claims that it has a sporty side and a fun side, so let’s see what that means exactly.

Fun Side Sporty Side

Sporty Side

For all of your sports, whether it’s running, hiking, biking, or even skiing, it will track your performance. Using the GPS, you can see how fast you were going, how far you went and where you have been.

You can say goodbye to getting lost with PUMA Phone’s excellent maps and navigation features. It comes loaded with a map of Europe, with pedestrian navigation and multiple point of interests, and if boating is your thing, it has a superb 3D yachting compass.

3D Yachting Compass

Playful Side

With the music player, you can become your very own D.J. When you fire up the music player, your tracks become virtual records on a turntable that you can manipulate, including speeding up and slowing down.

Release the D.J. within

The device also spices up SMS, giving 100 PUMA icons when words are not enough. This phone also jazzes up the boring stuff. Simple Setting changes like brightness are fun. To lower the brightness you just slide the cloud over sun, and the screen darkens.

PUMA SMS Icons

With Puma World, you can connect to all your friends, news, and stuff. It gives you direct connection to YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and FaceBook.

Other features include photo and video camera, video chat with a front facing camera, e-mail, full web browser, and picture sharing to magically pass photos from one PUMA Phone to another. (Still, it seems that Apple’s video chatting features are superior with full screen video and its soon-to-come sign language translation feature.)

PUMA's version of FaceTime

Other Stuff

The PUMA logo on the front doubles as the speaker, very swanky. Also, like Apple’s App Store, PUMA Stuff is the way to get to applications and mini-games created by the brand and its content partners.

One More Thing

Solar panel located on back

In true Steve Jobs fashion, I have saved the best part for a “one more thing” section. So, with out further delay, I will shed some light on this last feature, literally. Taking up almost the whole back of the phone, is a solar panel. THE WHOLE PHONE IS CHARGED BY THE SUN. How awesome is that?

So here comes the question: If you knew this was coming, would you go for this instead of the iPhone? In your esteemed opinion, is this an iPhone killer? Or would you just call it a device that, while really cool device, is out of its league in a smartphone market dominated by Apple and Android? Let us know what you think in the comments below.