Japanese phones are an odd mix of extraordinary features and unrelenting ugliness! Almost as one, they’re block-like slabs of phone with a few twisty bits, but telling one apart from the other is virtually impossible.

Unless, that is, you throw them in a metre of water and leave them there for half an hour. Take the phones out, and the only one that’s still working will be the Fujitsu F-01A – the world’s first waterproof mobile phone.

Actually, that’s not strictly true – it’s the world’s first fingerprint-enabled touchscreen phone! Other phones have been made waterproof before, you see, but presumably none of them had fingerprint recognition built in. The Fujitsu F-01A does, but whether this adds to its claim of world beating glory, or just makes its claim even more tenuous than one of Samsung’s legendary “world’s first…” is for you to decide!

Ugly it may be, but the F-01A isn’t exactly lacking in features. As well as it’s swivel screen, fingerprint sensor and waterproofness, the new Fuitsu phone also comes with a 5.2 megapixel camera,3.5″ widescreen VGA touchscreen, GPS, Google Maps and Street View, mobile Tv, and Japan’s e-Wallet mobile payment system.

Oh yes, this is one powerful phone alright, whether in the dry or the wet. Just makes you wonder why the Japanese phone manufacturers never worry about style – if they did, their phones would rule the world!

[Source: Tech-On]