If the Nintendo DS and a random laptop hooked up, the Sharp Mebius would be their love child. The unique-looking netbook features two different LCD screens, the main one being 10.1-inches, and the second being 4-inches and doubling as a visually-enabled trackpad-cum-touchscreen. The 'trackpad' screen is the world's first optical sensor LCD, which essentially means it stays bright and can handle more than two fingers to perform functions (take that, iPhone!). This sensor-enabled trackpad can be used to control the laptop (zoom in on docs, for example), edit photos, play music, crunch numbers (with a touch-sensitive calculator), flip through e-books, and more.

The Mebius came out back in May in Japan, but we were so impressed with it in person here at Tokyo's annual CEATEC consumer electronics show that we had to take a closer look, which you'll see in the above video. By the way, the Mebius is available at Japanese import site Dynamism for $999, complete with English-language Windows (and free tech support).

We've seen solar-powered cell phones and waterproof cell phones, but you'd have to combine both in order to truly take advantage of the fast-approaching summer beach season. Thankfully, a new waterproof, solar-powered cell phone from Sharp will save you from disaster after your other half launches it into the ocean when he or she catches you checking out other sexy folks on the beach.

Of course, this could also be a boon for those in developing countries, where electricity is scarce and monsoons are intense. Oh, and for pirates... let's not forget the pirates.

Price and features are currently unknown, although Sharp has claimed that after just ten minutes of charging in the sun, the phone will give you one minute of talk time and two full hours on standby. This world's first should be available in June... just in time for summer. [From: Engadget Mobile]

Japan is drenched in arcades with female-only purikura (photo booth for you gaijin) corners in which aflutter girls take pictures, bless them with sparkly decorations, and print them to book cover friendly stickers for all to see, for better or worse, to the horror of their moms, to the delight of their potential boyfriends. Let's say Sharp was to take the purikura phenomenon and fuse it with to the teenage girl's number one obsession: the cell phone (keitai for our Japanese readers). That's exactly what it did with this concept phone and software, complete with a shared art space that can be collectively decorated over wireless networks. Scary? Perhaps. Cool enough to snap some video in awesome disbelief? Most definitely.

Don't miss the gallery at Engadget.

Here it is, the moment you've all been waiting for. Pricing for Sharp's sexiest, freshest and altogether loveliest HDTVs arrived yesterday. As stated at CEATEC in Japan, the 65-inch LC-65XS1U-S will sell for a whopping ¥1.28 million ($12,225), while the 52-inch LC-52XS1U-S goes for ¥980,000 ($9,243). We'd expect those figures to be a touch lower whenever they come stateside, but rest assured, you'll be breaking into the piggy bank if either of these is to be your next set.

Of course you want to watch the Super Bowl in HDTV. Who doesn't? It seems the lead up to the big game is the second biggest driver of high-definition LCD TV sales for Amazon.com, according to the e-tailer's latest numbers. (The biggest driver is, of course, holiday season gift giving.)

So which TV leads the pack? The mantle this time goes to Samsung and its $2,199 52-inch 1080p LNT5265F set.

Samsung also dominates this top 10 list, with four of the spots. Sharp has three, Sony two and Toshiba just one. All but one of these TV sets is 1080p and all but two are larger than 40-inches. (Do we see the continued trend here? Go big and get the highest resolution you can.)

We're going to watch the game on a 42-inch Toshiba, but maybe we'll listen to one quarter of it on the radio -- and imagine what the game action looks like, just as in the olden days.

From Gearlog.

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The "bigger is better" TV trend has been around since the beginning of television, resulting in some refrigerator-sized monstrosities back in the '80s and early '90s. Today, big TVs are still hot, but thin big TVs are even hotter, with flat-panel displays getting spread out like high-tech crepes. The latest sets to enter the super-thin area are Sharp's new AQUOS X-series LCDs, which are just 1.35 inches thick.

Some are calling the sets the "world's thinnest TV," but we think Sony's 3mm thin OLED set still holds that honor. However, these very well may be the thinnest LCDs out there, and while Sony's OLED comes in at a paltry 11-inches, Sharp's offerings will come in at 37-, 42-, and 46-inch sizes. Contrast ratio (measurement of brightness and darkness of the set) is 15,000:1, which is better than most LCDs. All the new sets will, of course, offer 1080p HD resolutions.

No word on price or U.S. availability, but Japanese consumers will be able to pick them up starting March 1.

From CrunchGear

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Often it's customer service that wins consumers' hearts and dollar decisions -- and Sharp yesterday announced a program that (though it hints a bit of Big Brother) could change the way people operate and maintain their TVs.

The program is called Aquos Net, and it's essentially content and customer support provided with two of Sharp's new Aquos LCD TVs, which were also announced yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The SE94 and D74 series Aquos LCD-TVs come with Ethernet ports, which allow for direct connection to the Internet. Web-based content from Weatherbug, NASDAQ, uclick, and Aquos Gallery (basically pretty pictures) can be shown in split- or full-screen, and other content providers will be added soon.

The real prize of this online connection, though, is direct access to Aquos Advantage Advisors, who can remotely diagnose problems with a TV.

To connect to Aquos Advantage Live, a customer uses the Aquos Net Portal Web site to generate a unique identifier for the television. Using this identifier, an Aquos Advantage Advisor then has access to advanced settings and diagnostics. The adviser can support complex setup issues such as remotely checking to see if a Blu-ray Disc player is properly connected.

But not everyone has their Internet connection in the same room as their TV. For these folks, Sharp is marketing a Powerline Communications, or PLC, Adapter (which, if you care, is compatible with the HomePlug Powerline Alliance standard). This product almost deserves its own write up. PLC adapters allow you to establish your Internet connection -- and, for that matter, many other types of content – over the existing electrical lines in the home. This means no Ethernet wire has to be run from one room to another. There's something very appealing about no new wires. Sharp isn't the first company to introduce PLC adapters (look to Panasonic's competing HD-PLC adapters), but it is the first we've noticed that has put these adaptors to such good and practical use.

Sharp PLC adapters will available as single port (HN-VA100U for $149.99) and 4-port adapters (HN-VA400U for $179.99). The company will also sell a starter pack that bundles a single port and 4-port adapter into one package (HN-VA401SU $279.99). The adapters can connect not only to TVs, but also to set-top boxes, gaming consoles, PCs, and routers. The connection is also inherently more secure than a wireless connection. All three PLC adaptors will be available in March.

The SE94 series includes three models: The 65-inch LC-65SE94U, available this month for an MSRP of $10,999.99; the 52-inch LC-52SE94U, available this month for an MSRP of $4,199.99; and the 46-inch LC-46SE94U, available in February for an MSRP of $3,199.99. The D74 series consists of one model, the LC-52D74U which is coming in April for an MSRP of $3,599.99.

Don't worry, we'll get in to more detail on these new high definition LCD panels for you in another post.

For now, just savor the advanced capability promised by Aquos Net. We'd be tempted to purposely mess up our TV's settings just so we could see the remote diagnosis in action.

From Sharp Electronics.

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Sharp has certainly been a leader in the LCD HDTV market, thanks to its AQUOS line of sexy flat-panels that keep getting bigger and bigger (such as the 108-inch monster the company showed off earlier this year at the annual Consumer Electronics Show). But Sharp's latest 52-inch flat-screen prototype isn't notable for how big it is, but rather how thin it is.

At its thickest point, the new set set measures a svelte 29 mm, or 1.14 inches, compared to the four or so inches similarly-sized sets usually measure.

And as far as watching it is concerned, you won't notice any difference since it looks just like any other 52-inch flat panel LCD from the front. What's also remarkable is that the trimmed-down set still manages to deliver a contrast ratio of 100,000:1, a figure that's astoundingly high when compared to the 15,000:1 figure of most modern AQUOS sets. That means this set will be able to display much brighter and darker sections at the same time without the dark sections getting murky -- long a complaint among LCD owners.

The bad news is that this set is simply a prototype. Sharp is saying not to expect it to go on sale until 2010. Hey, that just gives you more time to save up, because this TV sure isn't going to be cheap.

From Engadget

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