The next wave of TVs enabled with Google TV will take a little longer, according to a report from NY Times. If the sources prove to be correct, Google TV products won’t make a big impact at the upcoming CES next month due to the product’s mediocre reviews.

Companies like Toshiba, LG and Sharp were planning to introduce their products but were apparently instructed by Google to push their products as it will give them time to “refine the software.”

“We will not be announcing a Toshiba TV or Blu-ray player or demonstrating the products at CES. We have an understanding with Google about the future product roadmap and will bring the right product out at the right timeframe,” confirmed Jeff Barney, the vice president of Toshiba’s digital products division.

However, one company that will launch their Google TV-enabled TV is Samsung and will mostly be unveiled during the scheduled keynote on Jan 6.

Sharp who recently launched its phones for the Indian market will bring 3D smartphones by next year. Sharp has confirmed smartphones that don’t require special 3D glasses will be sold in the United States, China and India in 2011.

While we don’t have details on the upcoming phones, we can expect 3D phones similar to the Galapagos line that will go on sale in Japan next month.

Sharp reckons one distinguishing factor that will help them fight in the international arena is by selling phones with “unique abilities and original services.”

[Mainchi Daily via Engadget]

iBall wasn’t the only company to announce its entry in the Indian mobile handset market. Sharp also announced its arrival in the hyper-competitive Indian market with four phones. The phones launched are Blink, Alice, Cyborg, Tango and are claimed to be created specifically for the Indian consumers.

Starting with the cheapest, Blink is a clamshell device priced at Rs.6,499. The phone supports Dual SIM active standby and features 7 colour LED illumination, quick access to social networking sites, Bluetooth, FM Radio and more.

Moving up the ladder is Alice. Priced at Rs.8,499, the phone has a full touchscreen display, dual front stereo speakers, camera with dedicated shutter button, social networking support, Bluetooth etc.

Next is the Cyborg that maybe expensive for some but comes with an interesting “Cycloid” phone design. The phone’s display can be rotated 180 degrees for better viewing and web browsing experience, 3.2MP camera, Bluetooth and accelerometer. It will sell for Rs.16,999.

The final device to be unveiled was Tango. Another clamshell device but features a 2.9-inch touchscreen display, 5MP camera, accelerometer and Bluetooth. It will retail for Rs.17,999.

It’s no secret that Japanese always have the coolest phones. While we devour ourselves with a 12MP phone with Xenon flash, Japanese consumers will enjoy the power of optical zoom in addition to the camera. NTT DOCOMO today announced a plethora of phones (28 to be exact) but the two phones that will make every mobile photographer happy are LG’s L-03C and Sharp’s SH-05C.

The L-03C is designed like a digital camera and is equipped with a 12.1MP camera, Xenon flash, 3x optical zoom and even a dedicated camera button. Amongst other features, the phone supports 3G, 3-inch WVGA TFT LCD and microSD card slot supporting up to 16GB.

Sharp’s SH-05C on the other hand, is a superior offering compared to L-03C. SH-05C can take pictures at up to a resolution of 14.1MP while shoot videos in full HD – yes, full HD – resolution at 30fps. To spice things further on the photography front, Sharp has also thrown in 3x optical zoom. Remaining features include a 3.7-inch WVGA screen, 3G support and microSD card slot.

The L-03C will arrive in January 2011 whereas SH-05C by February 2011.

[Via Impress]

Sharp today unveiled IS03, an Android device for the Japanese market. The phone just like other Japanese phones, is packed with features but it’s the inclusion of a 3.5-inch display that makes it special. The display supports resolution of 960×640 pixels, which is the same as Apple’s iPhone 4.

As for other features, the phone is powered by a 1GHz CPU, 512MB RAM and has 9.6MP camera with flash, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, EVDO Rev. A, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, 1-Seg mobile TV, FM Transmitter, microSD card slot supporting up to 32GB and dual-power mode screen that can show signal strength, remaining battery and notifications without activating the screen’s backlight.

The phone will be sold in November by KDDI.

[Via Slashgear]

Sharp has announced a new cloud-based media service that is aimed specifically at the Japanese market. Dubbed as Galapagos (after the Galapagos Islands), the service claims to bring a new user experience to meet “each customer’s changing needs.” The first initiative is an e-book store that will start in December and provide users a fee-based Automatic Scheduled Delivery Service, apt for periodicals and newspapers.

To deliver the e-books, Sharp has also unveiled couple of Android-based devices that will go on sale along with the e-book store. While Sharp is mum on most of the device details, we do know that one will feature a 5.5-inch LCD screen (1024×600) while the other one will have a 10.8-inch display (1366×800) which is optimized for HD viewing.

Both the models support Sharp’s latest XMDF e-book format and have Wi-Fi, web browser, trackball (5.5-inch device only) and SNS support.

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Press Release

Sharp has confirmed its intentions to launch a 3D supporting smartphone by end of this year. The smartphone will be equipped with a 3D panel and won’t require any glasses to watch the 3D content. The spokesperson also confirmed that the phone could also have a 3D camera.

Interestingly, Sharp has developed both the technologies and reportedly, it’s 3D screen is used in Nintendo’s upcoming 3DS.

Sharp will launch the phone globally.

[Via TOI]

Sharp has announced that they’ll enter the booming e-book market soon. However, their way of entering is not launching an e-book reader alone. They’ll be introducing a new format, which they call it the next-generation XMDF or ever-eXtending Mobile Document Format. Jargons aside, Sharp claims that with the introduction of next-gen XMDF, users will be able to enjoy audio and video content in addition to the text and images.

Furthermore, new XMDF will allow easy viewing of multimedia content and automatic layout adjustment to match publisher’s needs.

New reader devices supporting the next-gen XMDF format will be launched, supposedly in this year itself.

Press Release

The world will see the first product conforming to Blu-ray Association’s BDXL specification. Sharp has announced to launch a 100GB Blu-ray write-once disc in Japan on July 30.

The VR-100BR1 disc conforms to BDXL spec and is able to store up to 100GB of data on its three layers as compared to previous generation dual layer BD discs holding up to 50GB.

To enable writing on these high-capacity discs, Sharp will also launch two Aquos BD disc recorders. The BD-HDW700/BD-HDW70 Blu-ray disc recorders will support BDXL format and will allow to burn three layer or four layer discs capable of holding 100GB and 128GB respectively.

Press Release

Sharp today announced that they’ve developed a 3D camera module that can be fitted in mobile devices to capture 3D videos in 720p resolution. It’s the industry’s first 3D camera module that comes with dual camera and captures two simultaneous images, one for the left eye and another one for the right.

The camera module also incorporates functions to process the captured image, which synchronizes the color and the brightness captured from both the lenses. Furthermore, Sharp was able to reduce the and weight of the 3D camera and integrate other important functions like Timing Synchronizing Processing to sync the video signal time, Optical Axis Control Processing and Fast Readout Technology to enable HD video recording.

Sharp will ship samples from July while the mass production is slated to begin this year — end of this year presumably.

Press Release