Remember the NTT Hikari iFrame Android touchscreen gizmo from earlier this month? It’s not set to arrive in Japan until March 2010, but the company allowed Akihabara News in to play with their latest prototype. Based around a 7-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen, the tablet is intended to bridge the gap between a digital photo frame and a proper computer for a less than computer-capable audience.
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Room in your heart (and on your end-table) for another Android tablet? Non-Japanese geeks need not apply, but sometime between April and September next year NTT will push out this 7-inch touchscreen Android slate. The Hikari iFrame is being positioned as one part digital photo frame and one part web tablet, with WiFi for internet access along with various widgets for weather, calendar, news and even recipes.
Video demo after the cut
If you thought you’d seen it all in Nokia’s Vision of 2015 video, book a flight to Tokyo and stop by Fujitsu’s offices there. They haven’t seen to have got the memo that modular, wirelessly-connected mobile phones with integrated pico-projectors are meant to be the stuff of futurology, not fact, and as such have produced a working version of their F-04B cellphone. Akihabara have been for a play, and claim it’s a brilliant multifunctional device.
Forgive me if my Pre and iPhone 3GS lusts wane a little, I’ve just seen NTT DoCoMo’s latest super-phone, the Fujitsu F-09A. Packing a 3.4-inch sliding and rotating touchscreen, 8.1-megapixel camera with autofocus, smile-detection and high-speed FOMA and 3G GSM connectivity.
New Android carrier news today, as both Rogers Wireless and NTT DoCoMo are confirmed to be launching Android smartphones in the near future. Rogers Wireless has picked up both the HTC Dream (aka the T-Mobile G1) and the HTC Magic for release on its Canadian network on June 2nd. Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has not confirmed a release date as yet, but will be offering a rebadged version of the HTC Magic.
ASUS have announced a new Eee PC, specifically for the Japanese market. The ASUS Eee PC 1003HAG’s claim to fame is integrated WWAN that supports NTT DoCoMo’s FOMA network, offering up to 7.2Mbps downlink rates. Otherwise it’s pretty much in line with other recent Eee PCs, with Intel’s Atom N280 processor and 1GB of RAM.
NTT have developed a variable focus lens that they claim is 1,000x faster than existing technology. The lens is based on KTN (potassium tantalate niobate), an “electro-optic crystal” the refractive indices of which varies depending on how much voltage is applied across its surface. By adjusting the voltage, the focal length varies.
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