Testing DoCoMo's microscopic premini phone

Nikkei BP has up a review (in Japanese, but with photos) of DoCoMo's premini, aka the Sony Ericsson SO213, which with a footprint significantly smaller than a standard business card is very possibly the world's smallest cellphone. Surprisingly, the physical interface doesn't suffer from the pint-sized form factor as much as you'd expect, and if you have small hands it's possible to punch in mail messages at pretty much the same speed as a normal cellphone. The upshot, they say, is that you're likely to find it hard to go back to your bigger cellphone once you get used to this one. If you're outside Japan, unfortunately, all you can do is make up your own cutout version of it and pretend to talk into that. Or we may have just hit on an idea for the ultimate Bluetooth mod—turn a premini into a remote handset with number display. Go on, we know you can do it.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 19th 2005 2:23AM]

I have owned a Sony Ericsson T68i, T226 & now am enjoying a T637 all of which are only slightly larger than the premini & I only have one thing to say to you NTT Docomo Japan loving technophiles out there....."Get over it". American phones aren't so behind. Besides we're about to get the Moto Mpx220....way cool!!!!

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 19th 2005 2:23AM]

Yeah:
doco premini 40mm 90mm 19.8mm 63g
siemens s55 42mm 101mm 18mm 85g

Given the curves on the (more than a year old) S55, it probably doesn't *look* larger either, though the premini has probably managed a better keyboard. (And the S55 is only a little smaller than the Nokia 8890 from 3 years back.) I don't really see this as a leap in size, more of a "refinement", the premini probably fits just fine in the same belt holster.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 19th 2005 2:23AM]

there is at least one smaller phone out there -- see the panasonic eb-gd55, which is four grams lighter (the premini is 69 g) and smaller in two dimensions:
http://www.phonecycle.com/phones/ModelDetails.asp?ModelID=1&BrandID=2

the premini *is* possibly the world's smallest *Internet-enabled* cellphone, as Engadget says here: http://www.engadget.com/entry/5563571824745669/