" but unfortunately, very rarely does the partnership result in getting Japanese domestic market hardware launched elsewhere, which is a tragedy as far as we're concerned."

Incorrect, NTT DoCoMo and Taiwan's FarEasTone have always been close, being part of the Asian Mobile Alliance and the development of iMode in Taiwan, FarEasTone received Fujitsu's F905i (branded for FarEasTone).

Apple should shut up seriously... they've stepped on a few patents when they created the iPhone, including Sony Ericsson's accelerometer patent.

No problems with mine... and my phone has gone through the torture test being drenched in the toilet, lost for an hour in -15 temperatures while being buried in the snow, concrete, etc.

That's true... many other things like 1-Seg (Mobile Television, which only Japan and Brazil have), Mobile Wallet, FelCia, etc. won't work because we don't have the infrastructure.

Just to be clear, 3G for the 906i series actually works for incoming & outgoing calls.

They are getting the damn model number incorrectly. One news site does it incorrectly and everyone else makes the same mistake. In Sharp-China, model numbers have a total of four numbers, not three. It's SH1810C, NOT SH810C ARGH.

And yes it's GSM so I would expect to see this on eBay like how the SH9020C is on eBay as well.

Answering Mark's question, networks like NTT DoCoMo and Softbank don't want the phone to be used outside of Japan. Back when Japanese phones were amazing and didn't use WCDMA, it was impossible to unlock... so everyone outside of Japan can only envy the Japanese. When FOMA was introduced, they began using WCDMA technologies... which gave us a chance to use keitais. There's a huge demand for Japanese cell phones now, so hypersims and simhacks are becoming more and more advanced and stable. By the way, Mitsubishi does not produce phones anymore.

Hmmm... looks a lot like the Japanese Sharp phone models, especially the rotating flip display (Sharp's Cycloid Screens)

What's with "no video capture" geez... first the iPhone now this? That's disgusting... there will probably be a future third party app that will allow you to do this... but this is just stupid! >_

Engadget forgot to mention that there is WiFi and GPS on board this phone... yes you heard me right.. WiFi and GPS. Rika is the Walkman version of the G705

Have you even seen the photos? It produces amazing detail, but they have a slight red tint. Noise, a little bit, but every prototype has problems. They still have half a year to fix it before it's officially released into the markets

The rumor with it being $1000+ is fake. No the phone will go up to that price. That's crazy. I can see it for around $700-$900.

The iPhone Unlocked version is still priced at $680 right now [retail price].