EDDIEWONG

… mock-ups arrived today and I’m pretty happy with them.

The Media Skin officially launched today and will set you back about ¥23,000 if you were to setup a new contract. I took a little time to fiddle with one today at Yodobashi and it happens to be a very decent phone. Here are my thoughts:

The onscreen menu
The menu is nice to look at and use, if a bit common, and everything is pretty much categorised correctly. There is no English mode, Japanese only.

The screen
The screen, although is not big for today’s standard, it doesn’t seem too small on the Media Skin’s small body. Actually, it looks big! It is bright, sharp and the colours are vivid. Watching 1-seg digital TV on it, the colours totally pee on the Sony Bravia screen on my W44S! Because the whole face on the Media Skin is just one piece of shiny translucent plastic, it’ll highly likely get scratched easily. You’ll need to get a screen cover (probably available soon).

The 1.3 mega pixel CCD
The speed of the camera is decent and the captured images look great on the vivid screen. But this is always the case because of the small screens. To be able to really tell if the images are good, you’d have to load it onto a PC and view it at 100%.

The body
The footprint is rather small for a Japanese cellphone at W50 x H110 x D13mm. The flip-panel has no electronics on it – it serves only to make the phone look cool when its closed (although I’m not sure if by opening it during an incoming call will answer the call or not). The construction feels quite solid and is comfortable to hold. Just don’t drop it during a call otherwise the flip-panel will no doubt snap off! Regarding the body’s finish, here’s what I found:

Black – No doubt, this may be the most appealing colour to guys but I believe it’s texture could pose a problem. The texture is matt with no coating. It feels a little like rubber (or maybe concrete?) therefore it attracts dust like crazy. If you constantly try to wipe off the dust with your hands, or you slide the phone in and out of your pocket often, the matt black finish would soon turn grey and shiny and you’d also probably loose the rough texture (becomes smooth).

White – This colour feels smoother due to the coating. It is a lot less likely to gather dust and being white, you wouldn’t see them anyway. Because the finish is not smooth nor high-gloss, avoid sliding it in and out of denim jeans/jackets otherwise you’d end up with a blue phone.

Orange – All I can say is, this phone is designed for this colour. The orange is sharp (but not overly so), accompanies the black face-plate rather well, and it screams, “I’m a designers phone!”. Regarding the finish, it is also textured like the other two but it somehow feels smoother (I think). And being orange, scratches and dust will less likely been seen. But still, I wouldn’t slot this thing in and out of my jeans (yes, I’m very, very, very anal about things looking immaculate).

So, that is what I think about this great looking phone. As with all things designed by good designers, the materials which appeal to them will always be the materials that should never be touched. You may think this is silly because these kinda things are mean’t to be used by people, but lets look at it this way: if this phone used a smooth, non-textured high-gloss or metallic coating which happens to be scratch-resistant, do you think it will still look as cool?

See a quick showcase on this website.