Emonster in Shinjuku

I photographed a mockup of an EMonster in Shinjuku and here are the pics. The price is 19800yen for a customized version of Tytn II!.

Transformed Willcom 03

Willcom and Sharp push the bar one step further with Windows Mobile phone innovation and announce the 4th generation of their 03 series (until now W-ZERO3) - the Transformed Willcom 03.

The key selling points are the 3 amazing colors (eat your heart out rest of the world WM market :-) ) and the innovative, illuminated touch panel which replaces the keypad and can display a 10-key keyboard or cursor key set. The slide out QWERTY keyboard has been modified to slightly separate the Function and Tab keys from the rest. The unit also sports a 1-seg tuner for mobile TV, Bluetooth, customized home screen navigation, predictive Japanese input, Opera Mobile 9.5, E-J, J-E and J-J dictionaries and OCR reader for converting photos of text to text. If you happen to have an AQUOS TV that supports IR Simple it sounds like you can also wirelessly display you mobile phone on the television. Useful for sharing photos and I'm sure other applications.

Overall it looks like a very nicely designed device in a very small package. It's a shame they didn't increase the memory a bit as I sometimes can't start the camera when I'm running other apps. Also disappointed not to see GPS. I would have preferred this to Bluetooth.

The 03 will cost 63,120 yen (about $600) if you buy in straight out, or about half that if you pay in monthly installments with discounts over 2 years.

Here are the full specs:

OS: Windows Mobile Classic Japanese
Processor: Marvel PXA270 520Mhz
Display: 480x800, 3", 65,536 color, Mobile ASV LCD
Memory: Flash Memory 256MB, SDRAM 128MB
Communications: PHS (W-OAM W-SIM); Wireless LAN (IEEE802.11b/g), Bluetooth 2.0; Infrared (IrDA 1.2, IrMC 1.1, IrSS)
Card Slots: Micro SD x 1; W-SIM x 1
Talk Time Battery Life: 6 hours
Stand-by Battery Life: Signal light off: 250 hours; Signal light off: 420 hours
Camera: 2 megapixels with autofocus
Dimensions: 50mm x 116mm x 17.9mm

Willcom Product Page (Japanese)

In other news Willcom announced they will be selling a phone with a Felica chip later on this year. Maybe we'll see them releasing the first Windows Mobile device with a Felica chip next year?

During the golden week, I went to Yamada Denki in Hiratsuka, and I saw a pink Advanced W-ZERO3 es.