Wireless News

The guys over at Akihabara News have been sent one of Sharp’s distinctive 922SH Communicator-style smartphones to play with, and despite the fact that I know the 1-Seg TV wouldn’t work for me and that pink isn’t really my colour, I really do want one too! For now we get to enjoy the unboxing, and they’re promising a review of the handset soon.

Lest you’ve forgotten, the 922SH has a 3.7-inch 480 x 854 internal display, 2-megpixel camera, HSDPA and Bluetooth, and if I could persuade Softbank to be my sugar daddy it’d even work outside of Japan thanks to international roaming support.

Rubbing the Asia-only status of 1Seg mobile TV in our sullen, pouting faces, Sharp today announced their latest tuner for cellphones and mobile devices. Measuring just 5.9 x 5.9 x 0.9mm, the VA3A5JZ922 may not win any fans for its “bury me on a baseboard” name, but the digital noise reduction and super-frugal power requirements certainly make up for it.

In fact, the new Sharp tuner is the smallest such 1Seg device ever, 35-percent smaller in surface area than their previous model and 28-percent thinner. Samples go out to manufacturers at the end of this month, and then Sharp expect to start churning out 1m a month from the end of September 2008.

The Sharp 922SH you see here will likely never make it outside of Japan, making it yet another tease-telephone for the rest of us. That aerial is for the 1-Seg Mobile TV service, which should be a relatively enjoyable experience thanks to the large, 3.7-inch 480 x 854 internal screen.

The 922SH obviously has a full QWERTY keyboard, a 2-megapixel camera (which seems a bit on the low side), HSDPA and Bluetooth, and will – quite unusually for some of the handsets we see in Asia – manage international roaming. It measures 56 x 116 x 17mm and weighs a reasonable 132g.

It’ll drop in March, available in four colours: pearl white, metallic black, bronze gold and pearl pink

[via AVING]

Starting from the 1st of March, Japanese animation fans will be able to buy a Disney Mobile branded handset using the Softbank CDMA network, and get access to exclusive “Disney Web” portal via a dedicated ‘D’ key. The collaboration – which will include packages offering free calls between both Disney Mobile and Softbank customers – will include a special disney.co.jp email address and is being targeted at women in their twenties and thirties.

The first handset to be released, the Sharp manufactured DM001SH, is a Japan-only 3G model, with a 2-megapixel camera, 1seg Mobile TV and FeliCa, wide-QVGA internal display and branded with discrete Mickey Mouse silhouettes.

Subscribers will also get free access to Disney’s 23 official mobile websites. Prices have not been announced.

[via Tech-On!]

NTT DoCoMo plans to offer the new Sharp AQUOS SH905iTV. It is only 18.9mm thick encased in a clamshell swivel form factor, featuring a high-definition VGA display, Dolby Mobile audio technology and has 1seg TV and FM radio tuner.

The AQUOS SH905iTV is 3G-enabled and 100% compatible with NTT DoCoMo’s music, SD audio, music channel, i-Motion and Internet Movie Player services; the services were launched a few days ago on January 24.

It comes in Black, white or silver white. The main display is 3.2-inch ASV-LCD with a wide viewing angle, supporting up to 16k colors. Talk time is 200 minutes with a maximum standby time of 540 hours. There’s also a microSD/HC card slot for memory expansion.