Much is in demand from cell phones these days, and battery life is becoming an increasingly prominent concern. Philips is literally breathing new life into the industry by announcing a whole new line of cell phones — the Xenium 9@9 series — which boast up to 40 days and 40 nights of standby on a single charge. That’s a really long time, especially considering that even the incessant chatter can get 10 hours of talk time on a topped-up handset.

From left to right, we have the Xenium 9@9a, 9@9d, and 9@9t. They’re all candybars with similar looking keypads, but as you’d suspect, the higher the letter, the greater the features. The 9@9a is the most basic of the bunch with its dual-band GSM (900/1800) connectivity, 1.5-inch OLED display, 2MB memory, and polyphonic ringtones. That said, this is the longest lasting of the trio.

Stepping it up a notch is the 9@9d with its 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, Java 2.0, and 18MB of memory. This one has got about 30 days of standby. Last and certainly not least is the 9@9t, which rocks a 128×160 touchscreen, MP3 player, handwriting recognition, miniSD expansion, and smartphone-like functionality. Interestingly, it lacks Bluetooth and IrDA.