Sharp, the giant Japanese electronics producer, presented today its latest touchscreen handset, the Wilcom 03 (or Sharp WS020SH).

Since it's the first device to be released in Japan with Windows Mobile 6.1, we could say that, somehow, the new Sharp smartphone is the Touch Diamond of Japan. Although it's not as fashionable as HTC's device, Willcom 03 has a plus: a full QWERTY sliding keyboard.

The smartphone comes with a 3 inch TFT touchscreen display, with an 800 x 480 resolution and 65K colors, and an illuminated touch-sensitive flat keypad that can morph to suit the user's needs: it has a "cursor key" mode that allows you to easily browse through the phone's features and a "dial key" mode that has the role of an alphanumeric keypad. Moreover, details like battery life and network signal are not displayed on the phone's screen, but above it, thanks to the same "illumination" feature used on the morphing keypad. All these make the new Sharp quite unique when compared to all the other Windows Mobile smartphones on the market.

Besides the above mentioned goodies, Wilcom 03 also features: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, IrDA, mobile TV capabilities (external antenna included), a 2 Megapixel camera with auto focus and video, secondary front-facing camera for video calls, a powerful Marvell PXA270 processor at 520 MHz, 128MB of SDRAM, 256MB of Flash memory, USB, microSD card slot and so on. The battery included in the handset is capable of providing up to 6 hours of talk-time and up to 420 hours of stand-by time.

The new Sharp smartphone is available in Japan via Willcom, the fourth largest mobile operator in the country, and it will probably never see other markets than the Japanese one. Anyway, in case it will, users should know that Willcom offers the device for 35,520 yen, which is about $345 or 220 Euros.

For more images with Sharp WS020SH / Willcom 03 you can check out Sharp's official website, found at this address.