It’s early days, but Sharp’s indecently thin LCD TV has undoubtedly been the talk of IFA 2007. Just 20mm in the screen section, and a mere 29mm at its thickest, the glass-encased Aquos weighs just 25kg and yet boasts an astonishing 100,000:1 contrast ratio. Little surprise that spontaneous gasps leaked from the audience on first seeing it.
Sharp really pulled out the stops at IFA 2007 with some TVs so thin they’d drive a supermodel to organ removal. Undoubtedly star of the show was a 20mm thick LCD Aquos prototype, encased in a sheet of glass, only 29mm at its thickest point and weighing a ridiculous 25kg. Despite the lack of depth it was in no way lacking in the specs department; a 100,000:1 contrast ratio saw to that.
Sharp Japan announces 16 G-Series 120hz AQUOS LCD TVs ranging from 26-inch up to 52-inch. The 37”, 42”, 46”, and 52” feature an ultra thin 8.1cm LCD panel.
The video looks a little like the title sequence of a James Bond film, only without Shirley Bassey, but the Sharp EM-ONE has enough star quality of its own to make you forget the Welsh warbler. It looks far better with the white fascia rather than when we first saw it back in February, but the pity is still that it runs Windows Mobile rather than XP Tablet or Vista.
More photos of the EM-ONE after the cut…
Motorola has got some stick in the past for bringing out innumerable versions of their product line in different colours, milking the appeal rather than spending the time making a new handset (possibly one with a UI that doesn’t cause reviewers to projectile vomit into the faces of children). Well, Sharp appears to be going out of its way to avoid that kind of criticism, as its 812SH handset for Japanese operator Softbank is being launched in twenty different hues simultaneously.
Scourge of the indecisive, the Pantone 812SH (seemingly named after the famous colour company) comes complete with a 2-megapixel camera, 2.4-inch 260k colour LCD screen and 0.8-inch OLED external screen and a microSD slot. It’s a 3G model and, since we’re talking Japan, also supports the FeliCa wireless payment system with face recognition security.
Here in Blighty there’s a venerable old TV gameshow called Countdown, in which contestants have to pick a number of random vowels and consonants and are given thirty seconds to make as long a word as possible. I can only assume that it’s the fanatics of this show that Sharp are targeting with their combination-TV-and-dictionary, the Papyrus PW-TC900. Rocking not only a 1Seg digital TV tuner (which I’m afraid makes it Japan-only) but a full Japanese dictionary and Japanese-English translator, it also packs an mp3 player and SD memory expansion in a convertible-tablet style casing. The screen is one of Sharp’s AVS wonders, running at 480×272 resolution.
I’ve used Sharp Zaurus a few years back, a great Linux based PDA. I absolutely love it as it give me the freedom to tinker with its OS (a lot! and how bad I messed it up sometimes). Now Sharp is releasing Sharp RD-CMP2000R, a Linux based mini PC. It looks like RD-CMP2000R is Zaurus that you can find in Japan. The RD-CMP2000R is equipped with QWERTY keyboard, 1.3MP camera, and swiveling color display. The bad news is, RD-CMP2000R can only be found in Korea. No pricing information available at this time.
Sharp RD-CMP2000R [via I4U]
This is shocking – when did Sharp get into the business of building smart phone? Who cares, the new W-ZERO 3’s feature an Intel PXA270 processor clocked at 416-MHz, 2.8-in display with resolution of 640 by 480, 1.3-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, miniSD card slot for memory expansion, USB connectivity, OneSeg TV, and a full-size QWERTY keyboard. This candy bar style smart phone barely weighs 6.1 ounces and measures 2.8 x 5.1 by 1 inch.
SlashGear Japan
