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

Link

One of the models that deserve attention in the Winter line-up of AU KDDI would be Sanyo’s W42SA. This phone supports a new kind of handwriting recognition that does not require a stylus, instead you would be using your thumb to “stroke” over the number keys. Of course you can still use the usual T9 predictive text system, but just face it, there are a lot of words that even the Japanese don’t know how to pronounce properly, names and places with difficult Kanji for example (Chinese characters); and when you don’t know how to pronounce them, there’s no way you can type using Kana or romanization.

Of course this function is not needed if you use a fully alphabet-based language, but apart from being able to recognize thumbwriting, the Smooth-touch keypad (literally) can also be used for scrolling, similar but not as smooth as the Multi-Touch on iPhone obviously. The NikkeiBP team finds the Smooth-touch works pretty well, the built in 2 megapixel autofocus camera worked reasonably given that the overall thickness is only 19.4mm (49×99x19.4mm 117g), the smooth hinge design and huge buttons are also praised.

The 2.4″ QVGA screen, full HTML browser, music player and GPS all do their job as promised. The only nudge here is that Sanyo has not been maximizing their technology as you cannot use the Smooth-touch pad to control the cursor in the browser, and surprisingly there are no games that abuse such technology. Also, the battery doesn’t last too long when playing music. Ah well there’s no perfect phone after all. — Sam Chan

Sanyo W42SA review [NikkeiBP]
Thumbwriting video [NikkeiBP]
Smooth-touch scrolling video [NikkeiBP]

Japan’s second largest operator AU KDDI announced 10 new EV-DO phones this morning for the Spring 2007 line-up. Including the W51SH which we showed you the picture way before announcement. To our surprise, the Pantech W51PT which was also leaked earlier has not been announced yet. The 10 phones include one from the AU Design Project- the Media Skin, 2 from Toshiba, and 1 from all Casio, Panasonic, Hitachi, Kyocera, Sanyo, SonyEricsson and Sharp. Out of these 10 phones, 6 of them will support the DMB One-Seg service. Take note that these phones are jointly developed beteen AU KDDI and the manufacturers, they will not be sold outside Japan and neither will they be unlockable. More details on each of these phones after the jump.

(more…)

Japan’s second largest mobile operator AU KDDI announced 3 new phones this morning, but we are more interested in their upgraded service “Anshin-Navi”. The Sanyo A5525SA and Sweets Cute phones are targeted to young kids. Their parents can subscribe to the Anshin-Navi service which automatically detects the phone’s location by GPS, and check it on their phones or PCs. What’s more is that even when the kid’s phone is off, the GPS tracing is still on, and the real-time location data can be retrieved remotely by the parents. The most sci-fi bit is that the phone camera can automatically take photos every minute and send them to your parents. These “emergency” functions can be activated upon request, or likewise they can be activated automatically when the phone’s boozer alarm is on (to scare away pickpockets and pedophiles). The kid can also use this phone to check the relative position of his parents, but that might take some intellectual ability. Sounds like ResidenceEvil in real life eh? These new phones together with the new service will be available in late January. — Sam Chan

Press Release [AU KDDI]

The Gearfuse Plumbers got their hands on some leaked photos of what’s supposed to be Pantech’s (the largest phone manufacturer in Korea after Samsung and LG) unannounced W51PT for Japan AU KDDI’s EV-DO Rev.A network. The main display should be a 2.4″ QVGA, camera is a 2.1 Megapixel CCD with autofocus, One-Seg DMB tuner and microSD slot are built in and the thickness is kept below 12mm (103 by 48 by 11.9mm, weighing 123g). If all that is real, Pantech might have hit the jackpot this time. We think it looks good and just want to share with you. — Sam Chan

Most of the phone lovers must have seen this before. SonyEricsson’s W44S, the biggest breakthrough in terms of form factor after they came out with swivels. The question is, is this a branding gimmick or is the design any practical? One thing for sure is that it does look funny, and not everybody would like it. Some hardcore Sony fans even used the word “fugly” to describe the phone. Nevertheless the hinge does its job, and it does it quite well. The rest of the phone received no complaints at all, apart from the slightly shorter battery life when watching One-Seg Digital TV. The 3.2 Megapixels camera, music player, digital radio tuner and the awesome 3″ 16:9 screen all worked just as expected. We can pretty much take their word when Nikkei said that they liked it, because if they don’t, they will really bash it, unlike some other “polite” Japanese sites that do nothing but sweet talking. The W44S is manufactured exclusively for AU KDDI’s EVDO network in Japan, and will not be released overseas. SonyEricsson has not indicated if such design or technology would be applied to future European handsets. Catch the jump for more pics.

(more…)