09.04.2003

japantoday > technology

DoCoMo handset photos match quality of digital camera's

Wednesday, April 9, 2003 at 07:04 JST
TOKYO — NTT DoCoMo Inc on Tuesday took the wraps off a new Internet-capable mobile phone handset capable of taking and sending still photos whose picture quality matches that of digital cameras.

The new "505i" series of handsets can take pictures consisting of up to 1.3 megapixels, more than four times the 300,000 pixels that can be taken with conventional camera-equipped handsets, the leading mobile service provider said.

NTT DoCoMo plans to put the new handsets on the market in early May. The six types of the 505i series handsets will be manufactured by Sharp Corp, Sony Corp, Fujitsu Ltd and other electronics firms.

Takeshi Natsuno, director of the firm's "i-mode" planning division, told a news conference, "We will offer the new handsets at prices that will not be much higher than those of conventional i-mode handsets" equipped with cameras.

Users of the 505i handsets can store the high-quality images on memory cards inside the handsets and can print them out by inserting them into such devices as personal computers.

The new handsets provide the "Macromedia Flash" function of projecting the animated graphic images onto the handsets' screens continuously as if the images were video.

NTT DoCoMo's rivals say they are determined to come up with their own handsets with similar functions.

J-Phone Co, an arm of the Vodafone Group PLC of Britain, plans to introduce mobile handsets capable of taking and sending video images of more than 1.0 megapixels by the end of May.

An official at KDDI Corp said, "We would like to release our own products with similar functions quickly without lagging behind NTT DoCoMo too much." (Kyodo News)

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