When we were in Tokyo Lisbeth remarked that there was a new background sound: not just the beep beep of SMSes and mono- and polyphonic ring tones but also an ascending arpeggio announcing the arrival of a picture message to a telephone nearby. No wonder, then, that the first mobile phone that can take pictures with a reasonable resolution is only available on the Japanese market. For those who don’t read Norwegian, a post to Future Technology News links to the Japanese announcement and to an automatic translation into English.

The Casio A5401CA takes pictures at a megapixel, which means the quality’s good enough that you can print them out at 10 x 15 centimetres. That’d be enough for photos you want to use on the web, say for blogging… (via Jon)