Bring it strong, or don't bring it at all. That's certainly our mantra here at Engadget Mobile, and KDDI seems to share our sentiment, launching not one, not two, but
twelve new phones on their Japanese "au" CDMA network this week. Variety doesn't really seem to be KDDI's forte, though -- every last model rocks a clamshell form factor and roughly equivalent specs, give or take a megapixel here,
FeLiCa support there. Sony Ericsson's W43S caught our eye for its nifty faux wood exterior (come on, who wouldn't want a faux wood cellphone?), while the curiously-named glossy black Toshiba "DRAPE" seems to be positioned as the high-style model of the bunch. 2- and 3-megapixel cams (some with autofocus), expansion slots, and comprehensive music support all around... yeah, there's not a lot of differentiation here, but the uniformity's good in at least one way: every last one of these 12 are blessed with QVGA primary displays.
[Via
Akihabara News]
Filed under: Handsets, Others, Sanyo, Sony Ericsson, KDDI, 1xRTT, EV-DO, Kyocera, CDMA
Tags: a5522sa, au, casio, drape, ericsson, hitachi, kddi, kyocera, sanyo, sharp, sony, sony ericsson, SonyEricsson, toshiba, w41sh, w42sa, w43ca, w43h, w43k, w43s, w43sa, w44k, w45t, w47t
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Deluxe @ Aug 29th 2006 8:51AM
Actually, several (4 I believe) have the 'new standard' mobile resolution in Japan, which is 240x400. This is often refered to as 'WQVGA'. The Sony Ericsson is even taller, at 240x432 (wt?).
It's probably also worth noting that the Sony Ericsson's front panel is covered in lights on the inside of the changable face-plate area, which do all sorts of pretty patterns and flashy stuff.
Tang @ Sep 1st 2006 10:25AM
Also of note is a Sharp's first phone for KDDI. While Sharp has released many phones for DoCoMo and Vodafone, we haven't a seen any KDDI models from them, until now.