Here's a rather interesting new portable media player from NEC, of all companies. It's based o­n a perfume.

Thinner than Motorola's RAZR? Yep. NEC has a new phone coming out that has an 11.9mm thickness -- the RAZR has a thickness of 13.71mm, so it's been beaten.

We can't find an actual model number for this phone, but it is a GSM/GPRS handset that will be sold outside of Japan by NEC.

NEC Infrontia will be releasing an "industrial PDA" that can withstand a 1.5 meter drop to concrete, features dust/water proofing, and is compatible with good stuff like RFID tags and QR codes.

Keitai Watch continues their coverage of Wireless Japan 2005, but o­ne thing in particular that caught my eye was this concept phone o­n display from NEC. I have no idea where you would put your mouth to talk into the thing, but we'll assume that the future involves some sort of wireless solution. There's a couple other nice looking handsets o­n display at the show, such as the card-sized N930 for the Chinese market. Click the image below to continue to their article.

NEC has announced the world's first "tasting" robot. It is surprisingly accurate, too, able to distinguish between different types of cheese and bread. My taste buds work fine, and I still can't do that.

Another feature of the robot is its ability to offer advice. If its analysis concludes that there is a certain percentage of fat in the food, it will actually let you know that you're turning into a fatty. And since it's a robot, you don't have to worry about it reserving its judgement!

NEC has developed a 2.7" touchscreen with QVGA (320 x 240) resolution, planned for use o­n smartphones and similar devices.

Here's a new palm-sized transceiver from NEC with a throughput of about 1Gbps. This allows for uncompressed HDTV signals.

I thought those 64-chord ringers were enough, but NEC didn't. They went ahead and developed a 128-chord chip with support for 3D surround sound (as is included in the FOMA 901i series).

NEC has a new line of compact tower PCs intended for business users, equipped with the Intel 915GV chipset.

So what's to like? The 66mm form factor.

NEC has struck another blow for the HD DVD camp in their battle against the Blu-Ray "evil doers" with their development of a prototype drive for PCs that supports CD, DVD and HD DVD. The HD DVD support is read-only at the moment but write support is on the way. Take that Blu-Ray scum!