14 DAY TRIAL // Japanese joint-venture NEC CASIO is about to introduce one of its first smartphones on the US market. NEC Medias 101T is expected to arrive in both North and South Americas sometime this year.
NEC previously promised it would enter the European and US smartphone market, but the company failed to offer more details on its roadmap for the year.
Initially launched in Thailand earlier last month, NEC Medias 101T has been recently spotted at Bluetooth SIG.
According to the filed documents, the smartphone is confirmed for North America and South America, though no release dates are attached to it.
Here’s what Bluetooth SIG listing mentions about NEC Media 101T: "This Product is a digital portable Cellular Telephone with Bluetooth wireless technology. This cellular phone supports dual bands ; WCDMA and GSM / GPRS. HSDPA and HSUPA are also supported for high speed data communication. Also this product has functions of sending and receiving e-mail. This product has a camera, and can take photographs and video.”
Given the above description we’re almost certain the device won’t be launched through Verizon Wireless, instead AT&T might be interested in this waterproof Android smartphone.
Software-wise, NEC 101T is powered by Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system, which might be a downside, especially if the manufacturer doesn’t deliver an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade soon after launch.
On the inside, the smartphone is equipped with a single-core Qualcomm MSM8255 processor clocked at 1 GHz, 512 MB of RAM, 2GB of ROM and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).
The phone sports a 4-inch FWVGA capacitive touchscreen display that features Corning Gorilla Glass coating, as well as Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and A-GPS support.
There’s also a 5-megapixel rear photo snapper with autofocus, LED flash and video recorder. NEC 101T is said to come with HSDPA (14.4MBps) support as well.
