Toshiba building new factory to churn out iPhone LCDs, says Nikkei
Word on the street -- and by that we mean a Nikkei Business Daily report -- is that Toshiba's dropping a cool 100 billion yen (around $1.2 billion in US currencies) for a new factory in the Ishikawa prefecture, Japan . Its raison d'
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: apple-iphone, construction, engadget, factories, iphone, japan, nikkei-business, polysilicon, result, street, toshiba, word
Panasonic says it will start selling Android-based smartphones in Japan next year, overseas in 2012
Panasonic may not be new to cellphones, but it has sat out of the smartphone explosion of recent years -- an oversight that it's now apparently looking to correct. Speaking at a news conference today, the head of Panasonic's mobile division, Osamu Waki, said flatly that the compmany " misjudged the speed at which smartphones would be taken up in the Japanese market," and that "with the rapid shift to Android, we want to catch up quickly." Exact details on how it plans to catch up are expectedly still a bit light, but Panasonic's phones will indeed be based on Android, and it apparently hopes to differentiate them by emphasizing their networking capabilities with other Panasonic products. As for when the first ones will roll out, Panasonic plans to kick off sales in Japan sometime next year, with overseas markets set to follow in 2012.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone, Other Tags: engadget, entry, explosion, japan, japanese, kick-off-sales, markets, news-conference, panasonic, Rapid, result, shift, smartphone, smartphones, the-smartphone
Sharp Touch Wood concept turns real with limited run of 15,000 handsets on NTT DoCoMo
You might have expected Sharp's pebble-shaped Touch Wood concept to remain just that, a concept, but the eclectic Japanese market has found a spot in its heart to fit 15,000 units of the curvy, wood-trimmed cellphone. Built from locally sourced cypress timber, each handset will have its own unique pattern and color, while the innards will be filled with a five megapixel imager, a 3.4-inch (854 x 480) display, a MicroSDHC expansion slot, and your usual GSM and 3G wireless radios
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: each-handset, japan, limited, limited edition, market, radios, result, sharp, touchwood, unique-pattern, usual, wooden
Sharp Galapagos 003SH and 005SH bring glasses-free 3D to Japanese Android lovers
Hey, what could the maker of the 3DS ' autostereoscopic display be doing in its spare time? Why, stealing a bit of thunder for itself, by the looks of it. Sharp has just trotted out a pair of glasses-free 3D Android handsets for Japan's Softbank network in the form of the touchscreen slate 003SH and QWERTY-slidin' 005SH.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone, nintendo Tags: 003sh, autostereoscopic, camera-capable, entry, galapagos005sh, glasses-free3d, handsets, japan, mega, megapixels, sharp-galapagos, slate, softbank, tapflow
Sony Ericsson brings 16 megapixel Cyber-shot S006 cellphone to KDDI
KDDI may have done its best to bury it amongst the few dozen other phones it announced today (including that eye-catching X-RAY clamshell ), but we're not about to let the first phone using Sony's new 16.4 megapixel CMOS sensor slip by. That honor naturally goes to Sony Ericsson itself, which has stuffed the sensor into the otherwise ordinary looking Cyber-shot S006 cellphone
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: 16 megapixel, 16megapixel, cyber-shots006, cybershot s006, entry, ericsson, japan, kddi au, smartphone, sony
Sharp IS03 ASV display vs. iPhone 4 IPS display… fight!
Two 3.5-inch displays at 960 x 640 resolution, both equipped with fancy wide viewing angle technologies. Does the Sharp IS03's ASV get the nod over the iPhone 4's famously good IPS?
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone Tags: Angle, ceatec2010, excellent-960, ips, japan, mobile, point, though-the-is03, vantage, vantage-point, wide-viewing
Qi charger prototype from Sanyo and NTT DoCoMo seeks out, ruthlessly charges stuff
Wireless charging gear compatible with the Qi standard should be hitting shelves any minute now, but NTT DoCoMo's charging base at CEATEC has a completely unnecessary (and completely awesome) trick up its sleeve to set itself apart from the crowd. The prototype -- developed in concert with Sanyo and bearing the Eneloop brand -- gives you some visual indication that a compatible gadget has been detected by displaying a ring of blue LEDs that converges around the device to be charged once you set it down. It's a neat effect...
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: after-the-break, effect, from-the-crowd, gadget, inductivecharging, japan, neat, ntt, prototype, shelves, these-products
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: 2010-coverage, acronym, ceatec, engadget, exhibition, ground, japan, messe, numerous, running-at-2010, the-numerous, tvs
Sharp IS03 Android phone hands-on
Both KDDI and Sharp had a billion IS03s on display at CEATEC in Japan today (okay, not literally a billion, but quite a few), so naturally, we swung by to see what all the commotion was about. We'll be honest -- the phone didn't feel particularly high-end, coated top to bottom in cheap-feeling plastic and weighing a little less than you'd expect a phone of these specs to weigh. Furthermore, it was pretty sluggish and Sharp's UI skin atop Android 2.1 felt very "version 1.0," so we think we might want to wait for these guys to hone their game a bit before jumping in.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone Tags: ceatec2010, commotion, engadget, handset, japan, kddi, kddi au, phone, primary-display, video
Japan chooses ISDB-Tmm over MediaFLO for new mobile TV network, KDDI pouts
Well, that wasn't much of a delay at all! Japanese regulators have apparently gone ahead and selected NTT DoCoMo's proposal for Japan's next-gen mobile TV network scheduled to go live in 2012 -- ISDB-Tmm, an evolution of the country's existing one-seg technology -- over the MediaFLO-based solution floated by competitor KDDI. Considering that KDDI is tied up in CDMA / EV-DO, it's little wonder they were pushing MediaFLO, a product of CDMA patron saint Qualcomm -- but it's a moot point now that the license is going to DoCoMo's broadcasting consortium