A WinMo Phone with a Morphing Keypad

The Sharp WS020SH (or "Willcom 03" for short) went under the radar when it was announced in late May by the Japanese carrier Willcom.

It sports a maxed out Windows Mobile resolution of 800x480 on a 3.0" screen (like the XPERIA X1), and runs with a 520MHz Marvel CPU, 256MB ROM, 128MB RAM, Bluetooth, and WiFi. To make browsing better, it'll come with Opera 9.5. It has a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, making the device about 18mm thick, or a little slimmer than a TyTN II.

To make things interesting, the device will feature no physical hardware buttons on the front. Instead, with a touch of a button on the side of the device, you can change the front button layout to be either a dialpad for making calls, or a standard WinMo layout including a D-Pad and Start menu button, as shown below.

If you're brave and can understand Google's attempt to translate Japanese, check out the press release. And for a few more images of the dynamic keypad of the Willcomm 03, check out the post at TechOn.