Japanese NTT Docomo was demoing some of its rather unique phones at the Mobile World Congress and one of the more interesting devices that was on display was the Sharp Lynx 3D SH-03C which features a 3.8-inch 800x480 pixel glasses free 3D display. This Android handset is exclusive to NTT Docomo and was developed specifically for the operator by Sharp, one of many partners that develop unique phones for NTT Docomo.
Normally we'd say 3D screens are just gimmicky, but the one of the Lynx looked pretty decent, although sadly it was impossible to recreate the depth of view that the screen offered in our pictures of the handset. That said, this is one of the most promising 3D screen handsets we've seen to date and the two demos that were running clearly benefited to a degree from the 3D screen. It's unlikely that 3D displays will take off any time soon, as the displays still suffer from limited viewing angles and bright light doesn't seem to help with the 3D effect either.
Other features of the handset includes a 9.6Megapixel CCD camera that also records HD video, a “mobile wallet” or in other words an NFC sensor that allows for payments by touching your phone on a payment terminal, a one-seg TV-tuner (a solution unique to Japan) and interestingly enough even an infrared transmitter, something we thought was a dead technology by not as far as data transfers were concerned, but apparently not in Japan.
