Panasonic, one of the leading handset manufacturers in Japan, has recently unveiled a new mobile phone for its domestic market: Panasonic P706ie. Coming shortly after other nice devices (like the Viera 921P or the Mirror II), the new Panasonic is a clamshell that looks very elegant and targets consumers in search of mid-end featured phones.

The full list of specs that Panasonic P706ie includes looks like this: HSDPA connectivity for data transfer speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps, mobile TV capabilities, a 3 inch TFT internal display with 240 x 427 pixels and 262K colors, a small external 0.8 inch display with 96 x 25 pixels (good for quickly viewing incoming messages and calls), a large internal keypad (which includes dedicate keys for TV or email, a 2 Megapixel camera with auto focus and VGA video recording, advanced email capabilities (you can send and receive emails with attachments of up to 2MB), Instant Messaging, Web browser, pre-installed maps, bar-code reader, multi-tasking capabilities, voice dialing, calculator, alarm clock, USB and so on. The internal memory of P706ie is not known, but the handset supports both microSD and microSDHC cards of up to 8GB, so there won't be any "storage space problem" if you buy an external card.

Panasonic P706ie weighs 106 grams and, when kept closed, it measures 109 x 49 x 16 millimeters. The clamshell's battery should offer the following: up to 190 minutes of talk-time, up to 20 hours of music playback, up to 330 minutes of TV viewing (if used in ECO mode) or up to 570 hours of stand-by time.

The new Panasonic phone has three color versions: silver, black and lavender. The retail price of P707ie has not been announced, but the handset should be commercially available starting August 15, offered by NTT DoCoMo under the name of FOMA P707ie.