Had to happen: First clamshell WiFi phone

Japanese firm Rikei has come up with what they claim is the world's first clamshell WiFi phone. It looks vaguely reminiscent of some of NEC's recent Japan models, which we suspect isn't an accident, and comes in at a very cellphone-like 98g. Battery life is, as you'd expect, not up to cellphone standards, at 3 hours of talk time and 60 standby, and they say it'll cost "under Y50,000", which sounds rather pricey (our DoCoMo F900iT set us back Y5,000-Y10,000 less than that even throwing in the Bluetooth headset). Another vaguely ominous thing is the bit in the press release where it says "[a] telephone directory, Internet browser, mailer or other application software can also be loaded, if customers demand them." We do. We most definitely do.

[Via ITmedia, which also shows what it looked like in the mind's eye of the designer]