NEC announces world’s slimmest folding camera phone
Mobile Phones?
NEC are to display the world's thinnest folding camera phones, the NEC N412i and N500iS, and a new HSDPA prototype phone, at next week's 3GSM conference. The NEC N412i and N500iS are both 2.5G, with EDGE support, enabling data transfer speeds fast enough to cope with real time video streaming. They also come with MP3 players, and "large" memory. The NEC N412i is also known as the L1 in some countries, and is only 11.9mm thick. The N500iS is the successor to the N412i, and offers iMode support. No details yet on how slim it actually is, though.
Apparently, NEC intend to have a large presence at 3GSM, which is great news for those of us keen to see what's coming this year in mobile phone land.
More details and pictures of the new NEC phones after the jump.
[Source: NEC, Slashphone]
The NEC HSDPA Prototype Phone
NEC's HSDPA prototype has been designed with Japan's NTT DoCoMo, and can transfer data at 3.6Mbps. NTT DoCoMo's HSDPA service is scheduled to go live in the second quarter of 2006. Hopefully their tariff will be slightly cheaper than in the UK, where data can be transferred for around £3 ($5.22) per megabyte. In other words, an HSDPA service over here at the same rate will cost you 45p (78 cents) per second!! Not even our taxis charge that much!
Let's hope the mobile operators realize they're just fancy bit pipes real soon, and start charging for data transfer at realistic rates. Otherwise, no-one's going to use these glorious broadband speeds.
NEC N412i Specifications
Despite being the world's slimmest folding camera-phone, the NEC N412i still offers a good amount of features. The N412i includes the following:
- VIDEO WALLPAPER AND VIDEO PHONEBOOK – to get a movie as a wallpaper and see a video of your friend when they are calling
- DIGITAL 5X ZOOM / 1.3 Mega pixels CAMERA AND PICTURE PERSONALISATION – to take and send high quality pictures
- MP3 PLAYER – To listen to you favourite music wherever and whenever you want
- BLUETOOTHâ„¢ - To connect without wires
- SYNC ML – To connect your phone to your PC to easily transfer data
- PictBridge – To print your pictures directly from your phone
- i-modeâ„¢ SERVICES - to send and receive email and surf the web
- Java™ ENABLED – to download the latest games and applications
- TRI-BAND – to stay connected in five continents
- GPRS [ENABLED] – fast Internet connection
- SMS, EMS, MMS AND EMAIL [ENABLED] – to send and receive text, graphic images, colour pictures and audio messages
- LARGE 65,536 COLOUR QVGA SCREEN. SECOND EXTERNAL SCREEN, CLOCK AND 12 COLOUR LED BACKLIGHT
- HIGH QUALITY 64 CHORD POLYPHONIC SOUNDS – download the latest ring tones
