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