If there’s one thing the Japanse know how to do, it’s introducing technology. Not only do the Japanese carriers get some of the most up-to-date devices before a lot of other regions in the world, but they don’t drip feed their users – they just go ahead and announce them all in one go. Choice is a pretty important thing and having a line-up of devices that run from the lower-end of things to the bleeding edge is brilliant. Some of these phones are pretty awesome and we wish that the major carriers in the U.S. would announce lumps of devices like this, it’d make upgrade time a little easier, no?
What with the announcement being in Japanese there are some strange translations on offer so, bear with us. In the “with” series we have a couple of handsets below that come with 720p displays, Snapdragon S4 Pro CPUs, LTE and Android 4.1 from launch
- AQUOS PHONE EX (SH-04E)
- MEDIAS X (N-04E)
The “NEXT” series is the premium range of things, with a lot of them coming with 1080p Displays – like the Optimus G Pro – and larger batteries and LTE, of course:
- ELUGA X (P-02E)
- Xperiaâ„¢ Z (SO-02E)
- ARROWS X (F-02E)
- Ascend D2 (HW-03E) – it’s worth noting this is the 4.7″ 720p version of the D2
- Optimus G Pro (L-04E)
- MEDIAS W (N-05E) – this has two screens that folds, we’ll have more for you on that later.
As well as all this there are a couple of tablets, the Xperia Z we’ve heard a lot about and a phone for kids:
- Xperiaâ„¢ Tablet Z (SO-03E)
- dtab
- Smartphone for Juniors (SH-05E)
It’s really great to see one of the major Japanese carriers get behind Android in a big way and such a strong showing, from a number of different manufacturers, shows that Android is very much alive and kicking all over the world. Some of the devices are perhaps a little pedestrian, but they’re all solid offerings and if anything shows that the days of smartphones coming in at under 4.7″ are well and truly over. For me, this shows the versatility of Android, in that it can be targeted to so many different devices. Take a look at the gallery below to get a glimpse of the new devices, and to see how mobile devices look in Japan:
[Source: NTTDoCoMo, Via: Android Central]