NEC Corporation recently unveiled the future availability of a new mobile phone, the N706ie. As most of the handsets coming from NEC, the N706ie is a clamshell created to answer the needs of Japanese users.

NEC N706ie has a simple overall look and it's probably very easy to use. Its features include: a 3.0 inch TFT display with 240 x 427 pixels and 262K colors, a 1.6 inch external monochrome display with 96 x 84 pixels (for quickly viewing info like incoming calls, unread messages, clock, battery life and so on), 3G connectivity, GPS, mobile TV capabilities (as all the Japanese handsets seem to come with this feature lately), some kind of 3-axis accelerometer, a 2 Megapixel camera with video recording, Bluetooth, USB, Media player, Internet and email capabilities, document viewer, pre-installed games, microSD card support and so on.

The new phone weighs 115 grams, measures 105 x 49 x 16.6 millimeters (when closed) and comes with a long-lasting battery said to be capable of keeping the device functional for up to 650 hours in stand-by mode and 4 hours in talk-time mode.

NEC N706ie will be available in Japan starting August or September, via NTT DoCoMo, under the name of FOMA N706ie, and users will be able to choose from three color versions: Chianti Red, Shell White and Truffle Brown. The price of the phone is not known yet, but we can tell you there are small chances for other markets except the Japanese one to get the new NEC clamshell.

With almost 150,000 employees, NEC is among the largest and richest electronics companies in Japan. As most of the Japanese giant manufacturers, NEC tries to bring innovative products on the market and we already have a good example in this regard: the N705iµ handset, released at the beginning of 2008 - one of the slimmest clamshell phones ever created.