Japanese phones and tablets you’d wish are in Singapore

Walk into a Japanese phone store just a few years ago and you’d likely see lots of “locally-made” models by manufacturers like NEC, Fujitsu, Sharp and Panasonic. Branded as phones by NTT DoCoMo or other telcos in the land, these phones often sported the familiar clamshell design with an ultra-thin frame.

Turn up in Japan now, years after the Apple iPhone first made it as a successful “foreign-made” device, and you’ll easily spot a Samsung Galaxy SII and Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc among the most popular of all smartphones.

While the clamshell smartphone still has its place in a corner of the store, the obvious hot choice for many Japanese consumers now is big-screen touch-based models. Not surprising, considering that there are more phone users than PC users in the country and many use the phone to surf the Net instead of the PC.

Here’s a look at some of the interesting models Techgoondu saw on a recent trip to an NTT DoCoMo shop in Tokyo. Unfortunately, many of them are either not here yet in Singapore, or likely won’t make it here. …