Yahoo Google Phone Coming Soon from Sharp

What we're to understand we're looking at here is one strange combination of brands creating a device that's no less than completely absurd. This is a Yahoo! phone made for Japan (since Japan is still so very in love with Yahoo) and will be running on Android. You may recognize this device if you're familiar with Sharp's line of cute little phones: this one being a rebranded Sharp AQUOS smartphone in white. What the non-Google search engine group will be adding to the device is a brand new interface skin on the inside and a lovely new Yahoo! branded case on the outside – why they thought this would be an awesome idea is anyone's guess.

This device is said to be being carried in the very near future by SoftBank in Japan, still just called "Yahoo! Phone" as far as we can tell, and will feature a 1 Ghz single-core processor, a 4-inch qHD display, and Android 2.3 Gingerbread. There will also be at least one camera, on the backside, this big shooter with a flash and rated at 8 megapixels strong. Similar to many devices in the country, this Japanese device will also have a TV tuner equipped for all your television watching needs.

Surprisingly, this device appears to have the official Android Market aboard, so like the LG Revolution 4G here in the USA, for example, this device will be featuring a non-Google search engine alongside a Google-run apps market. As not many more details about the device are yet known, we're not sure if this means you'll be getting the rest of the Google suite of apps like Gmail, and Voice search out of the box, but you'll certainly be able to download them easily from the Android Market if indeed it does stick around for the final release.

This release make sense to those of you in Japan? Or has Yahoo! shown it's true colors as what appears now to be a lower company than Google where it was once the clear king of the web?