Gearfuse

Step aside Microsoft, there’s a new Netflix streamer in town. Today, Netflix announced that it has added TiVo to its growing list of streaming partners. Being that TiVo’s subscriber base hasn’t grown much since 2005, we’re thinking TiVo needs this partnership more than Netflix; considering Netflix has already partnered with LG, Microsoft and Samsung.

Netflix will be available to TiVo Series3, TiVo HD and TiVo HD XL owners. The two companies will begin testing the new service today in “several thousand” U.S. households, and it’s expected to be widely available in early December. Whether or not this will keep TiVo in the business of DVR remains to be seen. For TiVo’s sake, this partnership should keep them in the running for a few more years.

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Smartcards have been out for a while, but smartcard-phones are hard to find… unless you live in Japan where their phones can read from the chip which is already built in, or you can settle with one or two discontinued and old Nokia phones. Some guy in Taipei has tried to dig out the chip from his smartcard (their EasyCard, similar to Oyster in England, Octopus in Hong Kong, and Felica in Japan), and plant it onto the battery cover of his Sharp 903 phone.

Of course your phone would need to have space for that, and you would have to be careful not to damage the circuit when cutting it out. Just imagine the face of the guy at the ticket office. –Sam Chan

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Samsung has announced plans to release a line of phones through KDDI Japan which will have AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode) displays. This technology has been in the works by various companies, yet this is the first of these phones being mass-produced, going beyond the concept stage.

Japan always gets lucky with this cool new technology, though once a full-scale product is released, you can expect other companies to follow in their footsteps. We’ll most likely see AMOLED phone screens in the U.S. sometime next year I would think. — Andrew Dobrow

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This winner from the Good Design Awards features a new take on the flip phone. The KDDI Media Skin would be the first phone with a full 260,000 QVGA OLED display. And it’s pretty sexy looking too.

We previously mentioned this phone as the KDDI announcement of their Spring 07 line, though this is the first we’ve heard of the new display. A flip cover opens up to reveal the keypad, which has a slick look all on its own. I would love to see this right on the shelves. — Andrew Dobrow

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Industrial design freaks cannot claim to be freaks if they have never heard of AU KDDI’s Design Project, it basically comprises the wackiest cellphone designs that you could never imagine and commercialize. When AU displayed the INFOBAR2 and some other jaw dropping concepts earlier this year, everybody doubted if they will actually become real phones. Well, AU is saying yes this morning, and they’re showing us the working model of INFOBAR2 in all its glory as a pre-launch for the winter line-up.

Pics and specs after the jump.

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When we talk about Casio, most people will think about their Exilim digital camera line that Sony, Canon and everybody else copied. Few would know that the company also produces cell phones in Japan. Their G-shock phone was popular, so they decided to bring the Exilim label to their image-oriented cellphones as well. The first Exilim phone is W53CA, which is exclusive to AU KDDI’s CDMA EVDO network in Japan. The Exilim phone was put on sale this week and the reviewer, who tested the camera, was not impressed.

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It came with no surprise when Sony announced the availability of the updated PSP (PSP-P2000) which shed 4mm of thickness and 91g of weight off the original model. The company also announced a DMB tuner module at the same time, and we’re dying to see how it works with the the new TV-out capability.

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The reason why we’re so excited about this “Actface” concept phone is that there is actually a good chance of commercialization, from the past experience of AU Design Project. The very Japanese-looking brush drawing on the background UI will animate in-sync with the keys you press. You can watch the movie here and see for yourself.

For those who don’t know much about the Japanese mobile market, AU (AU by KDDI) is the second largest operator in Japan, and the company was the first to start a design war in the market, by commercializing “impossible” and ultra-sweet-looking concept phones. Catch the jump for more.

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Softbank announces today their strongest ever multimedia phone, the 911T manufactured by Toshiba. This slider houses a 3″ W-VGA screen (480×800 pixels) in its 17.9mm thin sliding body (4mm thinner than the Toshiba W52T slider, 51×112x17.9mm 142g). The phone runs on Softbank’s 3.6Mbps HSDPA network, receives One-Seg digital TV service, comes with Bluetooth A2DP profile so you can connect your stereo headphones wirelessly, you can also stream music to supported bluetooth HiFi’s. Toshiba has partnered Oakley to design a pair of sunglasses with stereo bluetooth headphones on it, these cool looking glasses will come with the phone as you buy it, so be prepared to pay for quite a bit. The camera is a 3.2 megapixel CMOS with autofocus and anti-handshake functions; internal memory is 1GB and you con expand it with microSD up to 2GB (that’s 3GB altogether). The standard highend features such as MS Office document reader, full HTML browser and Felica electronic money chip are all built in. This mad phone will go on sale in March, expect it to be a hit. Jump for more pics.

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Japanese network operator Willcom has announced the JRC WX220J this morning. The phone is nothing compared to the 20 phones you saw from AU KDDI and NTT DoCoMo 2 weeks ago, however the WX220J retains a really retro (20th century) design and stripped off everything fancy. The WX220J is targeted towards companies that use the PBX standard for their indoor chordless phone network; that is, when you call the land line, somebody will be picking it up at the other side on the chordless WX220J. The phone itself can hold up to 10 different (fixed line) numbers, so this is excellent for the person left behind when everybody else is out for lunch.

Once that poor employee gets off work, he can bring the WX220J home and expect it to work on the train, because the phone itself cam work just like any other PHS cellphones, and it will run on Willcom’s nation-wide network. The screen is a basic 128×160 65K color TFT, internal memory is only 1.5MB, but PHS roaming to Taiwan and Thailand is supported.

The good thing about using PHS is that the battery life is usually impressive: phone conversations can go up to 7.5 hours per charge and standby is up to 700 hours. To protect commercial secrets, there will be no camera on board; to keep all the employees focused, there will be no MP3 or JAVA program files supported. What’s left would be the Email support which ensures that nobody slacks off and can reply emails within minutes. The WX220J will be on shelves by Jan25, the price will be $110. Just treat this as the Japanese’s Blackberry, but with indoor cordless phone functions. — Sam Chan

JRC WX220J Product Page [JRC Japan]