Video: Hands On With KDDI's Transparent X-Ray Cell Phone

Last week, we reported about the new cell phone line up of Japan’s second biggest mobile carrier, KDDI. The company unveiled no less than 19 new handsets, and among those, one model stood out because of its unique design: the aptly named X-Ray.

And a few days ago, I visited KDDI’s showroom in Tokyo (where I live) to go hands-on with the handset. The X-Ray, which is part of KDDI’s iida “designer phone” sub brand, features a 3-inch LCD display, a LED sub display with 7×102 resolution, a 8MP CMOS camera, a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, a digital TV tuner, and a microSDHC card slot (head over to iida’s English website for a full spec list).

Quite obviously, the most important feature is the transparent body, which may look flashy on pictures but is not as spectacular as you’d think in real life – in my opinion, at least. As you maybe can see in the video I shot and embedded below, this is especially true in poorly lit areas (such as the showroom).

http://blip.tv/play/hMQ5goezewA%2Em4v

The X-Ray will go on sale in Japan next month with a $490 price tag.