DoCoMo's latest phones--a new coat of paint, but short on surprises

The 506i series is on the way. Well, the subdisplays are a little bigger and there are a few tweaks here and there, but the fact that the company says it's focusing on colour and external design with its new 2G range should make it clear that real efforts in handset innovation have shifted to 3G. The NEC N506i looks to be the best of the three new models, with its OCR functions (scan business cards into your address book or look up words in the internal dictionary), PDA-like twist screen (it can be used for most things with the screen twisted 180 degrees and folded flat again), and TV hookup, plus the ability to have it read emails aloud for you. Elsewhere, things that caught our attention were the 2 megapixel camera in the Fujitsu F506i, and the ability to voice-trigger the Mitsubishi D506i's camera shutter by saying a prerecorded word.

The only other revelation on the horizon is that the company will apparently be putting chips for the Felica payment system into the next tweak to the 506i range, the 506iC models. These look set to be released in the autumn, presumably around the time that the 3G FOMA Felica models come out.

Product page (Japanese)

[Read: DoCoMo press release]