Obviously, downloading is seen as more of a priority than uploading, and so HSDPA phones have been around for over a year now, whereas HSUPA has seen little attention. The Samsung W600 changes all that, offering upload speeds faster than the majority of broadband connections.

In fact, 5.76Mbps is so fast, that it could easily be used as mobile Web server. The problem is convincing the buying public of exactly why you'd need such a device! Nokia tried this last year by releasing a mobile Web server for their Series 60 devices, but it was only ever released as a Beta, and Nokia had a difficult job explaining to us exactly why we'd need a mobile Web server.

Samsung haven't even gone that far - they've simply released a phone with uploas speeds so fast it could be used a mobile Web server, but not actually released the server itself! Indeed, they've not even bothered to tell us what we could do with such fantastic upload speeds!

Still, if you're into phone Top Trumps, having the fastest uploading phone in the world may be your bag. The fact that it comes with a 5 megapixel camera, 3" touchscreen with haptic interface and mobile TV might also help as well!

[Source: Aving.net]

The 9225H certainly looks the part as far as smartphones go, but it's not actually that feature-rich. It support mobile TV (using the Japanese 1-Seg format), but although it also lets you play video and music, it only comes with a 2 megapixel camera.

Don't think Google has too much to worry about at this stage!

[Source: Electronista]

Interesting concept, I bet you were thinking, but these phones are just concepts - there's no way you can produce any real music on them.

Oh really? Just check out the video taken by Akihabara News. I thought the sounds they made were going to be OK, but not much more than you get from an old 16-bit arcade machine.

Boy was I wrong!

Check out the video after the jump.

This is the single most impressive new concept I've seen from a mobile phone in ages! These musical phones are genuine musical instruments, and the music you can make with them is seriously impressive. Toys they most defintely aren't.

Sure, you look a bit odd playing them at first, but when you think of the success the Nintendo Wii and Guitar Hero have had in getting the general public to play vitual guitars (not to mention shedding their inhibitions), it's crystal clear that people will have no inhibitions playing these phones.

Furthermore, these phoens could actually usher in a new wave of music. It was cheap electronic musical instruments from Japan, such as the Roland TB-303 baslline, TR-606 drum machine and SH-101 synth unit, that helped create a whole new music genre back in the early '80s: electro, from which spawned hip hop, house, acid house, and eventually every electronic musical genre since the days of Rave.

Not everyone has a musical instrument, so kids with an interest but not enough money have little incentive to get one. But if your mates suddenly have a musical phone and your mobile's contract is up soon, what are you going to buy? A new phone with an MP3 player on it, or one that lets you jam with your mates?

This concept has the potential to take over the world, and create a huge surge in new musical innovation. Yamaha and KDDI, you'd be nuts not to turn these phones into production models. And if you do, please ship them over to the UK!

[Source: Akihabara News]

As you can see, it's a genuine Transformer lookalike, but with the addition of full mobile phone functionality - including 3G, QVGA screen and a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera.

More pics and details of SoftBank's new transformer-phone after the jump.

Now the Transformers movie came out last year, so you might have thought that SoftBank had missed the boat a bit. Not a bit of it, though. The company has released the 815T PB in time for the launch of a new Japanese TV drama (what, you couldn't tell this was a Japanese phone?!) called Ketai Sousakan 7, which itself is based on the Transformers concept. And just to show off its Transformer-like credentials, you can even glue a complete Transformers kit onto the back of it, turning it into a phone that you can guarantee no-one else in the world (well, outside of Japan anyway!) will own.

Aimed at kids, the 815T PB will undoubtedly get a huge following amongst adults as well. Unfortunately, it's destined for the Japanese market only, but I reckon this would sell by the bucket-load wherever you sold it!

[Source: Akihabara News]

Rather than using physical bits of plastic that have to snapped on and snapped off, the W61H uses e-Ink technology, similar to that used in e-Book readers such Amazon's Kindle. The whole back of the phone therefore acts as a separate display, but rather than displaying info, it simply displays a pattern.

More details after the jump.

This is an interesting use of e-Ink technology. Created for reading eBooks, e-Ink offers extremely high definition and draws virtually no power. As such, a pattern displayed on the back of a phone using this technology would look virtually indistinguishable from the same pattern that was painted on using traditional methods.

I can't see this being much of a seller, and it certainly won't change the mobile phone world overnight, but it's an innovative use of e-Ink technology, and should do well in the younger sector of the market, where customization is a seen as A Good Thing.

The Hitachi W61H is destined for Japan only at the moment on the KDDI network, but if it's successful, it shouldn't be too long before similar technology is seen on other phones around the world.

[Source: UnwiredView]

Given that Japan is one of the most seismically-active regions on Earth, an earthquake warning system is the obvious application of Area Mail, which can send its alerts out to mobile phones within an area identified as most at risk. This has the benefit of alerting only those who need to be alerted, and not unnecessarily panicking those who are outside the danger zone.

NTT DoCoMo also announced a few other interesting pieces of mobile phone technology...

The new NTT DoCoMo phones also offer Shabette Hon-yaku, a Japanese-English (and vice versa) voice translation service. Simply speak into the phone in Japanese, and the phone will speak back in English - or vice versa, if preferred.

The interesting thing about this service is that the translation occurs on the server, not the mobile phone, meaning that the service is free to improve in time without the need to upgrade the handsets.

Intriguingly, the voice input itself isn't sent to the server, but rather "characteristics" of the voice, which are then translated. The same functionality can be used to control other applications, such as games.

[Source: Techn-On]

More details after the jump.

However, although this design itself isn't new, most other similarly-designed smartphones have the screen run the entire length of the phone. Sharp, by contrast, have opted to squeeze the screen into two thirds of the phone's length, keeping the keypad to the left (or bottom, depending on the phone's orientation).

The result is an odd-looking phone and a screen that, despite its huge 3" and WVGA (800x480) resolution, seems oddly cramped. It's probably due to people being used to seeing a screen run the full length of a keyboard, but the result looks like typing through a letter box!

Despite this, the Sharp Advanced is just that. Based on Windows Mobile 6, it comes with Wi-Fi, Web browser, Microsoft Office Mobile and the ability to read business cards via its camera, which, surprisingly, is only 1.3 megapixels.

Fortunately for aesthetics lovers, the Sharp Advanced/W-Zero3 is only available in Japan - and if you are in Japan, stick with a Samsung Ultra Smart F700 or Nokia E90 Communicator, as both are better looking and higher specced.

[Source: Aving.net]

Yet that's exactly what the company has done, and will be putting it on sale in Japan in November 2007.

More details and pictures after the jump.

The most striking thing about the InfoBar2 is its design, with a novel rounded shape making it stand out from its competitors (particularly its Japanese competitors, whose phones always tend to look the same, even if they offer different features).

It's not exactly short of features, either. Boasting a 2.6" OLED screen, the InfoBar2 comes with a One-Seg DMB TV tuner for mobile TV (complete with video recording ability via microSD card), 2 megapixel camera, MP3 player, Felica electronic money technology, and AGPS Sat-Nav.

All this in a unit just 15.5mm thin!

Concept phones always get the fan boys drooling with excitement, but hats off to AU KDDI for actually turning their prototypes into reality.

[Source: GearFuse]

After talking about Samsung's Disney phones for kids, time now to look at the other end of the spectrum, in the form of the Fujitsu RakuRaku phone, designed for people who's advanced age has rendered the complexities of the modern-day mobile phone beyond them (i.e. aynone over the age of 20!)

Raku is Japanese for Easy, so the Fujitsu EasyEasy phone is obviously designed to be as easy to use as possible. Given this, you'd expect the Raku to offer nothing more than the ability to make and receive calls, and possibly to receive a text or two, but you'd be wrong - the Raku is a full-specced Japanese phone that features GPS, a digital camera, and even photo display correction software.

More details, and a bit of a rant, after the jump!

How, you might be asking, have Fujitsu managed to make the Raku so allegedly easy to use? Simple - they've gone for the pen-based bar scanner approach.

Drawing on technology that some old VHS video recorders of last century used to use, a bar scanner can be connected to the Raku, and then swiped over a series of images that depict the action that the user wants the phone to do.

For example, sending an email is as simple (or as Raku - see what I did there? ;) as swiping the pen (called, for some odd reason, the Grid Onput) over a picture of an email. Of course, you first have to write your email, but this is made Raku as well. Don't bother trying to type on the phone's keypad - simply get your bar scanning book out, turn to the page marked "alphabet", and swipe the pen over the letters you want to type!

Simple, easy, and very very Raku. Sure, it'll take you ages to type your email, and yes of course it'll be annoying bringing along a book of icons with you wherever you go just to be able to use your mobile phone, but hey - it's still Raku, right?!

I can see this phone selling by the dozen...actually, by a dozen. Yes, twelve phones, that's all they'll sell, and to the same people who buy those miracle kitchen gadgets that are designed to make your life so much Rakuier, but which never ever work! Yeesh!

Akihabara News]