Entries for July 2007

Our mobile phones will be slimmer, 3G-enabled and sporting 3D fascias. That's if your expectations are based on handsets now available in Japan, where NEC has just unveiled the world’s slimmest clamshell handset for the W-CDMA network that features a stereoscopic fascia.

The rectangular N704iμ handset, which has just gone on sale in Japan over the NTT DoCoMo network, measures 10 x 5 x 1cm and weighs about 90g. It also has a maximum continuous stand-by time of around 690 hours, a continuous talk time of around 200 minutes and continuous video calling time of around 135 minutes.

The phone is also equipped with an LCD screen that provides a resolution of 240 x 345 pixels.

New device can render 100 million polygons a second - a performance that far surpasses that of current handheld game consoles

Toshiba has come up with a dedicated 3D graphics chip it reckons will add previously unseen levels of realism and excitement to games played on mobile phones. The new chip, the TC35711XBG, can render 100 million polygons a second, a performance that far surpasses that of current handheld game consoles.

Samples of the new graphics chips will be available from October 2007.