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)

NEC to Launch World's Smallest, Slimmest, Card-Shaped, Camera-Equipped Mobile Phone

- Cutting-edge, ultra-thin packaging technology realizes new mobile solution -

Tokyo, February 3, 2004 --- NEC Corporation today announced that it has succeeded in creating a card-shaped, camera-equipped mobile phone, which it will launch on the China market, one of the world's largest and most competitive mobile markets, in February, 2004.

NEC's own cutting-edge technology has enabled an ultra-compact, attractively packaged mobile phone boasting measurements of 85mm (width) X 54mm (height) X 8.6mm (depth), and a light weight of 70g. This mobile-internet product supports GSM/GPRS, and is equipped with a 1.8 inch (120 X 160 dot) TFT color display and a digital camera (300,000 pixels). Loaded with 40-polyphonic ring tones, and installed with camera functions including a mobile light, and consecutive shooting ability etc, this phone is used in conjunction with an earphone and a mike.

"This world's smallest and slimmest mobile phone is a symbolic flag-ship product representing NEC's leading position in mobile terminal technology," said Yoshiharu Tamura, General Manager of Mobile Terminals Division, NEC Corp. "NEC will continue to offer new, innovative mobile terminal solutions, which offer compact shape, and the latest product technologies, allowing users use of a variety of mobile phones for different situations."

"By combining NEC's competence in mobile and basic R&D technology, we can realize completely new-concept mobile phones" said Hisatsune Watanabe, Associate Senior Vice President and Executive General Manager of Central Research Laboratories, NEC Corp. "Ultra-slim mounting technology is an important and constant R&D theme for NEC."

Together with NEC in Japan, the Mobile Terminals Development Center based in Beijing, China, has significantly contributed to product planning and in enabling this competitive product to be brought to the market.

This product has been realized through the following:
- Multi-layered slim structure.
- Slim and highly stiff case structure.
- Thin printed circuit board.

Along with a slim case, this product also boasts a slim structure that was realized through optimized space layout of stackable function modules (circuit board, display, key-sheet, battery, and embedded antenna). High stiffness was enabled by a compound structure of metal and resin. NEC also developed new thin printed circuit board by decreasing thickness by approximately 40%. In addition, equipment reliability is heightened through stress reduction realized by our original process technology. The core LSI employs very small CSP (Chip Size Package), and the most advanced high-density surface mounting technology.

NEC intends to further advance this technology toward broader application use in areas such as mobile terminals, PDAs and micro PCs etc.