Japanese company Willcom Inc, in cooperation with Sharp and Microsoft, announced a follow up to its Advanced W-ZERO3 model--the WS020SH smartphone, nicknamed WILLCOM 03. The handset features a sliding full QWERTY keyboard like its predecessor, but its front side is occupied by the 3-inch WVGA LCD touch display. The bottom half of WILLCOM 03's screen could be controlled to show either a "Cursor Key Mode" screen which lets you control the cursor with an arrow key or the "Dial Key Mode" which displays an alphanumeric keypad. The feature is somehow similar to the InteractPad of LG KF600, although the InteractPad has more modes available. Anyhow, in the WILLCOM 03, a power button at the flank enables you to switch between modes.

The WILLCOM 03 smartphone is smaller than the Advanced W-ZERO3 and runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 Classic Japanese Edition platform with Opera Mobile 9.5 as its default browser. Aside from the sliding keyboard, it also has a 2-megapixel camera, 1-seg TV tuner, Bluetooth connectivity, wireless LAN, infrared, and uses W-SIM which supports W-OAM, Willcom's high speed communication standard. Available in green, pink, and gold, WILLCOM 03 will be available by June, 2008 for US$610 in Japan.