The D901is has a nice gimmick with its retractable keypad, though when I was using it I couldn’t help but feel that it would break really easily after a few months of use.

This is a common complaint of mine with the cell phones on the market in Japan, they seem ‘plasticy’ and not very well constructed. It might be a personal thing but I like my phones to feel tough.

The slider mechanism is activated by a button and it is pretty cool, that is if you can press the button in one smooth move when pulling the phone from your pocket. You will have to practice this a lot because of the stupid position of the button. Its just not placed where you fingers would naturally land when gripping the phone.

The screen has a nice sharp display and the phone is generally good, however, the buttons are all on the small side ( maybe its because of my large - foreigners fingers ) and the navigation could do with a bit more thought.

This phone is well built with a solid feel, quite a chunky case and a little stubby aerial.

The screen seems a little small but has a nice sharp definition.

The GUI has a nice modern retro feel for the navigation and features a theme set as the interior of a stylish apartment, quite original.

The controls seems quite slow to respond, however, the finger print reader was really cool.

You set the finger print by sliding your finger down the reader slowly three times in a row. The phone maintains a digital image of your finger print which you can use instead of a keypad number for locking various functions. I was having a great time freaking out my co-workers by totally locking the phone up and going for coffee. It was all good until the third trial when I swiped my finger to unlock the phone and it couldn’t read my print. I got into a mild panic after about 3 minutes of trying until it eventually let me in. Its a fun feature and has masses of ‘cool’ factor but might be a bit overkill for a mobile phone. Perhaps, if DoCoMo get their way and we all use phones as wallets this feature will be a necessity.

OK its rare that I feel the need to comment on how great a product is as I am a bit of a critic and a cynic, so this blog entry is coming as quite a shock to me. You see I have just found out more about the W31CA from Casio which is just out on the AU network here in Japan.

The cell phone just seems to pack it all in: it has a 3.2MPixel camera, funky swivel screen, full internet browser and best of all it can view Word, Excel and PDF files from a PC.

I am definitely going to get my hands on one of these soon and give it a whirl.