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With the release of the iPhone 3G and the T-Mobile G1 this year, most “dumb” cell phones seem to have been lost in the crowd.  Especially those cell phones with tech that isn’t readily available to Americans.  Casio has just announced one of these cell phones.  The W63CA is part of the EXIFILM series, that’s right, a consumer grade digital camera line.

The reason for the phone being part of a camera line?  It has an 8.1 megapixel camera on board, with a 3.1” OLED screen.  Got that?  8.1 megapixels.  On a cell phone.  The main problem for us?  Its a Japanese phone. 

The W63CA can pick up wireless television signals, translate text captured by the camera from Japanese to English, and can speak translated English from Japanese text.  Some pretty nifty stuff.

Phones like this remind me that while we have some nice OSes on phones here, the technology is nowhere near that of Japanese phones.  The phone can even “be used to make mobile electronic payments,“ which would be awesome, even though that technology isn’t used in the U.S. yet. 

It’s strange how these features are present in so many phones in Japan, yet all we can come with in our most advanced phones is turn them into calculators, flashlights and to-do lists.

Read [Electronista]

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