Philips handsets have melted away in Europe in recent years and while the Chinese owners of the brand -- with market rights until 2011 -- have carried on with Xenium in Asia, Euro types have seen nothing. All that is changing with the release of the Philips 192, a completely lackluster dual-band GSM effort with a 65k color, 128x128 pixel resolution cSTN display, 10-day standby life, 16 channel polyphonic ringtones, without GPRS support and an expected retail price of €40 -- roughly $60 -- when it lands in Portugal. The big return isn't probable to be a success, as in this price-segment there are many more well-known manufacturers present, like Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson with lots of models. Anyway we can hope that the Philips Xenium models with many weeks of standby times will return to Europe too and that a few providers will include these in their offer.
