A Dubai-based firm has developed an Islamic cellular phone that 'promises to connect you to your beliefs wherever you are,' said a Terranet.com report.

This high-tech flip-phone does much more than just point devout users in the direction of the holy city of Mecca from 5,000 cities worldwide. It stores the entire Koran and has a Yamaha sound system which can be programmed  to play the Islamic call to prayer, or Azan, up to five times per day.

A two-inch, 65,000-colour screen allows users to view the entire text of the Koran, with English meaning translations, a search engine, games, high-resolution photos, and text messages. The dual screen also offers an Islamic Hijra calendar and 12 GPRS technology -- the latest in mobile Internet connectivity, said Terranet.com.

Customers in Lebanon will the first to be able to buy what is dubbed one of the biggest Islamic-related products since the prayer beads. It took the company -- Ilkone -- more than two years to develop.

The phone -- the i800 -- was manufactured in Korea and is Ilkone's first product. 'Ilkone' is Arabic for 'the universe'. The company is a majority Arab-owned and the first regional player to tap the Middle East's fast growing mobile phone market.

The i800 will next be sold in Malaysia, Turkey and Indonesia. Ilkone aims to bag a major share of the world's estimated 1.3 billion Muslims through this product. The company is hoping that the i800, which lacks a few features of the latest mobile phones, is likely to do very well in Saudi Arabia where camera phones are banned. Al Azhar, one of the world's leading centers for Islamic scholarship, has reviewed and certified the Islamic phone.

Ilkone is not limited to only phones with Islamic applications. The firm aims to become a global mobile player and is planning to launch three models -- unrelated to the Islamic phone -- by the end of this year.