NTT DoCoMo FOMA F703i / Fujitsu F703i

FOMA is the name of NTT DoCoMo's 3G W-CDMA network in Japan. Closely related to the UMTS networks found worldwide, FOMA was actually the first 3G network in the world, and as Japan is often a good place to look for upcoming technologies, NTT DoCoMo's range of FOMA handsets can be interesting to look at. Incidentally, you may not have heard of NTT DoCoMo if you live outside of Japan, but they're the company behind i-mode technology which is pretty widespread.

This bring us to the catchily named NTT DoCoMo FOMA F703i, or alternatively the Fujitsu F703i (Fujitsu manufactured the F703i for NTT DoCoMo). One paper the F703i looks to be a pretty run-of-the-mill 3G device, but it has a pretty unique selling proposition not found in other phones.

Fujitsu have created the F703i to be waterproof, and say that it can be totally submersed to a depth of one metre for thirty minutes. We'll admit that this is a pretty unlikely scenario, but it does mean that the F703i can cope with pretty much all normal scenarios involving water, and it might even survive a spell in the washing machine.

It's not a very simple feat to do this - it means that absolutely everything needs to be tightly sealed, including all the buttons, hinges, flaps and the keypad. Surprisingly, Fujitsu managed to do this with the F703i while still keeping an elegant design.

The F703i follows the currently fashionable trend of having hidden lights and a display under the sleek surface. The main display in a 240x320 pixel panel, there's a 1.3 megapixel primary camera with a seconday one for video calling, microSD expandable memory (with a maximum capacity of 2GB), a multimedia player and i-mode support. From what we can tell, the F703i doesn't support Bluetooth. As is common with FOMA device, the F703i is a Symbian smartphone.

At 109 grams and 100 x 48 x 18 mm in size, the F703i is a pretty conventional size and weight for a modern 3G phone. Standby time is up to 17 days with around 2.5 hours of talktime.

The underlying technology in the Fujitsu F703i is pretty average, but the waterproofing is the clever thing - especially the way that Fujistu have managed to do this in such a discrete fashion. It's the type of practical feature that many mobile phone users would appreciate worldwide.

The F703i is available now on the NTT DoCoMo network, in Japan only.
2/21/2007 10:03:30 PM
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