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Toshiba's 908A: Softbank style, global support
A rare moment of clarity for a Japanese manufacturer realizing that the remainder of the world lusts after its equipment? We're not sure what sparked this, but Softbank's Toshiba-sourced 813T is allegedly coming to other parts of the GSM world (not ours, we're guessing) as the 908A. Specs include 3.2 megapixel primary and VGA secondary cams, triband GSM and single-band WCDMA, microSD expansion, stereo speakers, and 2.4 inch internal plus 0.8 inch external OLED displays. Not breathtaking, but not bad, either -- and the Japanese connection gives it +15 cool factor. Look for it in late spring or early summer.
Softbank's spring '07 collection
Alright, this is just getting ridiculous. Between NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, and now Softbank, we've already seen enough new phones for the Japanese market in this young year to last us years of in-depth analysis. That'd be just great if we actually had years to track 'em all down and play with them, but oh, no -- we've no doubt that there'll be a fresh round of handsets dropping just in time for the temperatures to rise. Let's see if we can blurt all these new Softbanks out before they've been obsoleted by their successors: from Samsung, the 708SC; from Sharp, the 812SH and 813SH; Toshiba brings the 911T, 812T, and 813T; Nokia (yeah, Nokia... crazy!) packs the X01NK; Panasonic does the 706P, and NEC rounds out the bunch with the 706N. Some of this is old news (at least one phone, the kid-friendly 812T, has been kicking around for a while, and the X01NK is basically a rebranded E62) but the real story here seems to be the 812SH clamshell which'll be offered in no fewer than 20 (yes, twenty) frickin' colors. But wait, it gets better: the phone is co-branded with Pantone, which we're guessing must mean that the color of the phone is extraordinarily... uh, accurate. The 911T slider is another winner, rocking that same 800 x 480 display we saw in Hitachi's W51H, a 3.2 megapixel cam, A2DP, a 1seg TV tuner, 1GB of onboard storage with microSD expansion, and enough juju to humiliate pretty much any phone with the stones to step to it. Actually, we're pretty sure the same could be said of about any phone in the bunch.
