Carriers

DoCoMo is gearing up for launch of the Google phone in 2009 according to company officials. The Nikkei said Wednesday South Korea’s KT Freetel is also involved in the DoCoMo-Google project but the official said nothing had been decided on potential partners. DoCoMo has a 10 percent stake in KT Freetel. The daily also said the new Google phone would come with a keyboard and a touch-panel display and be some 20 percent cheaper than currently available cellphones.

With all guns blazing market leader NTT DoCoMo took the wraps off their next-generation series of handsets at a press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday afternoon, watch the full event video (in English) and/or review the individual offerings via the press release . The company has officially marked it’s shift from the legacy lineup of mainly 90xi and 70xi series handsets – currently 906i and 706i – in an effort to achieve new growth, as was recently outlined. The introduction of a new, although still somewhat confusing, 0xA-series numbering scheme has models targeted at four main consumer segments.

With (hopefully) something for everyone bundled into this latest line-up, including the introduction of i-Conceirge and i-Widgets, the first wave starts hitting the store shelves in December with several models coming along in the first few months of 2009. Meanwhile, you can always check-out the fancy Flash Gallery for all the imagery. What a week, between the three main operators we have seen a total of 45 new handset models for the coming season!

SoftBank Mobile opened a floodgate of new handsets for the year-end season with an impressive presser in Tokyo on Thursday. While the Omnia from Samsung with it’s TouchWiz UI was turning alot of heads here, it’s likely a new TV-tuner for the iPhone will pick up more attention from people overseas. The add-on device also works as a battery pack, very handy considering the surprisingly limited power which everyone is complaining about, it will apparently use an external antenna for access to 1Seg digital TV broadcasts as well. You can watch the complete event video, in English, streaming online Here.

KDDI has introduced seven new handsets for it’s fall and winter season. This new lineup has three stand-out models; the Wooo W63H from Hitachi has a first in the world, as of this announcement, 3.1 inch organic EL display with wide VGA liquid crystal, Sharps AQUOS W64SH has a full 3.5 inch LCD, which is said to be offering the best display specifications available to-date and the EXILIM W63CA by Casio is touting an 8.1M camera with face-detection auto-focus. The Panasonic W62P and Kyocera W65K are both waterproof 1Seg digital TV enabled and all devices have Global Passport roaming capabilities along with Felica e-wallets and GPS of course. The Flash Gallery is Here.