KDDI is set to launch a solar-powered cellular phone in Japan sometimes in the summer. The picture shown above is the solar-powered concept phone that will be developed by Sharp. According to KDDI, the phone will feature a big solar panel, which could provide up to 1 minute of talk time or 2 hours of standby time for 10 minutes of sunlight. KDDI is confident that this still unnamed solar-powered phone will on sales by June of 2009.

This news is kind of old. However, in case you miss the release of this amazing phone, you should keep reading this post. Sharp released the world’s largest touchscreen phone, Sharp 931SH, on 1/31/2009. The 931SH has a 3.8-inch Half-XGA LCD screen, bigger than iPhone’s 3.5-inch. Plus, the 931SH has a 5.2-megapixel digital camera, Digital TV (One Seg) support, 3G, GPS, and video call. No wonder iPhone 3G sales lag in Japan, when there is a better equipped touchscreen phone out there in Japan.

Sharp, the mobile phone giant of Japan, released two brand new cellular phones in China last month – Sharp SH1810C with 8-megapixel digital camera, and Sharp SH6010C with 3.2-megapixel digital camera and stainless steel casing. The SH6010C has common Japanese style flip phone design. Lets’ have a clear look at the Sharp SH6010C phone.

Sharp Launch a powerful multimedia phone, Sharp WX-T825, in Taiwan. The mid-level T825 slider phone is equipped with a 2.8-inch high-definition 240 × 400 pixels display with ASV technology, a built-in 2.0-megapixel digital camera / camcorder, Stereo Bluetooth connectivity, and microSD memory expansion slot that supports up to 4GB of memory upgrade. One of the coolest feature of the phone is its built-in motion detector that can rotate screen, change pictures, and etc. Let’s see how the motion detector in the video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

June, 4 – Softbank showed off the latest waterproof Sharp 824SH and Panasonic Tropical 823p phones at an official launch party in Japan yesterday. Softbank demonstrates the operation of Panasonic Tropical 823p phone in water, as captured in the photo above.

Sharp Waterproof 824SH is only 15.3mm thick, which makes it the world’s slimmest waterproof 1seg cellular phone. Surprisingly, Softbank spokesman said that the waterproof phones are designed to target women.

“Many of our customers started subscribing to our service because they were attracted by the advanced capabilities of our handsets and our reasonable fee system,” President Masayoshi Son said. “Therefore, the ratio of female users has been slightly lower compared with our rivals.”

As a result, SoftBank Mobile launched a project to develop handsets targeting women about a year ago. When the company conducted a survey on functions that women are seeking, the request for “waterproof function” was higher than any other functions including 1seg and GPS, it said. That is because many women said they “wanted to write email while bathing.

via TechOn

Why we can’t have Japanese phones that are much cooler than the phones (except iPhone) that we have in United States? It is not fair !