NEC recently announced the soon to be released cellular telephone with a built-in camera that is roughly the size a credit card. It is about a centimeter thick, measuring 85-x-54-x-8.6 mm and it weighs 70g . The N900 should hit market before the end of this month in China, the Tokyo company said Tuesday.(click image on the left for full size)

Viewing the image on the right, you will notice that it looks nothing a handset and more like a small, thin digital still camera.  The simple layout of the face  only has the NEC's log, lens, and a light.  The back of the phone reveals a keypad sitting to the right of a 1.8-inch color TFT LCD.  The display resolution is 120 pixels by 160 pixels.

The N900 is extremely light but definitely not light on features.  It includes  GPRS, WAP, SMS, MMS and 40-tone polyphonic ring tones. The camera is a 3Mp model and the phone also includes a quick shooting mode that can take 4 images per second.  Battery life is reported to have 85 hours of standby and 70 minutes talk time.

The N900 will not be available outside of China or offer versions compatible with other cellular network standards.  Yamazaki didn't provide an exact price for the handset but said that it would cost the equivalent of around £520.