SoftBank Unveils World’s First Phone With Radiation Detection

Following Fukushima’s nuclear disaster, Japanese citizens have been especially wary of radiation exposure. SoftBank on Tuesday revealed a new smartphone to answer such concerns. The company’sPantone 5 107SH is the world’s first phone with a built-in geiger counter, capable of measuring radiation levels within 20 percent accuracy. Pantone-branded products are always colorful — and they should be given that Pantone makes the world’s most popular color-matching system. Following suit, the Pantone 5 comes in eight vibrant colors: black, white, purple, yellow, blue, orange, and two types of pink. The phone runs Android 4.0 with a Sharp skin, and features a 3.7-inch, 854×480 LCD screen. On the back of the phone you’ll find a 4MP camera. Internally, it sports a 1.4GHz processor. Nothing out of the ordinary here. But what makes the Pantone 5 unique isn’t really its colorful chassis. Rather, it’s the first of its kind to feature a built-in radiation sensor. Since the Fukushima disaster, we’ve seen companies release mobile radiation detectors like Scosche’s iPhone-compatible RDTX, an accessory that plugs into an iPhone to give users a reading of nearby radiation levels. The Pantone 5, however, eliminates the need for dongles and attachments. The front of the phone features a button, just beneath the screen, that provides access to a radiation sensor. Once you press the button, the phone launches an app that reads the number of microsieverts, the unit in which radiation is measured, in the surrounding air. The sensor isn’t as accurate as the ones in dedicated geiger counters, but it should likely be enough for day-to-day users. The phone will be available around the end of July. There’s no word on price, but if it’s cheaper than buying a dedicated geiger counter or an iPhone accessory, then it could certainly appeal to SoftBank’s Japanese market. wholesale accessories,ipod accessories,ipad accessories,iphone accessories