japan

Disney Mobile is back to the mobile market, as expected, and will debut on March 1, 2008 in Japan with a new DM001SH (a rebranded Sharp 821SH) handset.

The DM001SH is a 3G cell phone with a 400 x 240 display, 2Mpix camera, 1-Seg mobile TV tuner, FeliCa, and a special "D-button" for quick access to a Disney Web portal site.

Softbank introduced a new smartphone that it plans to release in Japan this April. The device is called HTC X03HT and will sport the following features:

• Size: 52x106x19.4 mm;
• 3G HSDPA support;
• QWERTY keyboard;
• Windows Mobile 6.0 OS;
• Office Mobile (Word, Excel and PowerPoint);
• Multimedia player;
• microSD card slot of up to 8GB;
• Bluetooth connectivity;
• Colors: Red, White and Black.

NEC FOMA N705i is a new mobile phone for DoCoMo's network.

It measures 104x49x14.5 mm, weighs 105 grams, and features 3G connectivity, a 3" QVGA LCD, a 1.6" monochrome sub-LCD, geo-tagged photos, a standby time of 580 hours.

The N705i will be available for purchase in Japan starting February 1, 2008.

SoftBank is about to release its new PHOTOS 920SC cameraphone in Japan, so we decided it deserves some attention.

It has two cameras: a 5Mpix one with Xenon flash, 3x optical zoom, auto focus, and face recognition, and a 3Mpix CMOS cam for video calls.

Other features include a 2.

Inside Contactless announced that they expect 1-2 million NFC-enabled phones shipping outside of Japan in 2008. They provide NFC chips for manufacturers such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and LG for global distribution, and to Kyocera Wireless for their U.S. models.

However, currently the company supplies chips for NFC trials, but hopes to start commercial launches in the U.

Sharp W61SH is a new handset equipped with Sharp AQUOS branded LCD display.

The screen measures 2.8" and has a 2000:1 contrast ratio. The phone will be available in Black, White, and Hot Pink colors only in Japan through KDDI.

For those living in the U.

It looks like Apple intends to bring the iPhone to Japan.

Currently the company's officials are negotiating with NTT DoCoMo, the largest Japanese carrier, trying to convince them to accept the revenue sharing deal. Steve Jobs is also in talks with Softbank in case NTT DoCoMo denies the offer.

Sharp has introduced its latest cell phone in Japan called the AQUOS 822SH.

It will be available on December 15 in a choice of 5 different colors, including sliver, white, gold, black and pink.

Just to let you know, Kyocera W54K is a new slim TV-enabled handset that has just been released in Japan.

It features a large 2.7" 240x400 WQVGA display, which when rotated horizontally starts running mobile TV.

Japanese market only.

The new Nokia NM705i has been recently approved by the FCC and will soon be available in Japan from NTT DoCoMo.

The phone is compatible with quad-band GSM and tri-band WCDMA networks, has an FM radio receiver on-board and supports a multitude of Bluetooth 2.0 profiles, including:

• Audio Streaming
• Audio/Video Remote Control Profile
• Dial-up Networking Profile
• File Transfer Profile
• Generic Access Profile
• General Audio/Video Distribution Profile
• General Object Exchange Profile
• Hands-free Profile
• Headset Profile
• Object Push Profile
• Serial Port Profile

Pricing and availability details are yet unknown.