"Touchkey" phone by DoCoMo and Mitsubishi

We know you're so totally tired of all those easy-to-use keys that handset makers insist on putting on their
phones these days; you're looking for a challenge, right? Well NTT DoCoMo and Mitsubishi have come to your aid with a phone concept that replaces that keypad with a contextual touch screen interface (it looks like somebody's been biting off the Nintendo DS). You can of course use the screen for dialing, but DoCoMo and Mitsubishi are hoping to help you navigate that mess of menus that you can get yourself into on today's feature laden phones by labeling your options right on the touch screen for your selection pleasure. Obviously you lose the feel of physical buttons, making no-look SMS that much harder (something that's already a problem on keypad-less handsets like the i-mate Jam), but they do claim that the buttons have a tactile feedback when pressed. The concept phone doesn't have a camera, instead the back of the phone is dominated by an LED array to notify you of new calls and give you the time (which means you'll have to wait a little while longer for that 3 LCD phone you've been holding out for). There's no word on price or availability, but since this is a DoCoMo endeavor we probably won't be getting any of these in the US anytime soon.

[Via Textually]