DMFCs produce electricity from a reaction of methanol, water and air — the only by-products are a small amount of water vapour and carbon dioxide. Japanese wireless carrier, KDDI, has combined the fuel cell with a Lithium Ion battery to better handle the phone’s spikes in power demand.

This combination gives the prototype phone about 320 hours of power. That’s around three days longer than an equivalent handset. And instead of taking an hour or so to recharge, a few squirts of methanol only takes seconds. Right now the prototype is thicker than we demand of today’s phones, but the two companies hope the technology will eventually make it into portable gadgets like phones and media players.

Of course, Toshiba promised to start selling a DMFC battery charger by September, but there’s still no sign of that. Good to see they’re making inroads, though. It’s pretty interesting tech. [PC World and DVICE]

The Polaris really looks like a multimedia mobile phone that was gently placed into a rolling dock (yea, I know we are all thinking Sony’s Rolly). But it could do a lot more than follow you around and play your tunes. Apparently it could monitor its owner’s health, process diet data and record physical activity. According to CrunchGear it was jointly developed with Flower Robotics who also conceived this mannequin bot.

Crunchgear scored this club remix video of the phonebot:

I bet this robot would have told me about 10 minutes ago that I should stop eating cookies for breakfast. [CrunchGear]

The porn aficionados, or Jason Chens as they’re known in the States, are causing the Japanese online porn industry to grow at 1,000 new customers a day with some people paying up to $US105 to get on board.

Consider this a peek into the near future here in the US. When more people get phones with data plans that are able to download video, the exact same thing will happen here, just with less mosiacs and cartoons. People love their porn, after all. [Bloomberg via The Register]

KDDI has taken a pragmatic approach to the solar phone, integrating a waterproof panel onto what sounds like a very low-draw device. They claim that 10 minutes of sun absorption should grant two hours of standby, or a minute or so of talk time—an extreme ratio that suggests that battery life—not a huge feature list—is the main priority here.

The solar panel alone is enough to charge the battery to a respectable 80%, but KDDI doesn’t mention how long that might take. Price and global availability are TBD. [KDDI via Impress]

We’ve been told from the start that Android—essentially just a lightweight Linux distribution—would make its way to a variety of devices aside from mobile phones, but most people took that to mean we’d see Google’s mobile OS on netbooks, tablets or MIDs. Those are coming, but it looks like Motorola, with this unexpected use, could beat them all out of the gate.

As for the box: It’s a simple set-top unit with an emphasis on mobility. What that means, other than small size, is that the box has integrated speakers, a wide variety of connectors and even an internal optical drive that can play DVDs or rip CDs to the device’s hard drive. It’s Japan-only and won’t arrive until CEATEC in October, at least, but it’s interesting too see just how wide Android’s applications are, in practice. [Android Guys via CNET]

The Premier 3 is part of Japanese phone company KDDI’s Spring 2009 line-up and it features a beautiful 3″ (480×854l) display, 3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, GPS, Infrared and a dedicated remote control. If you want to rip music from a CD, all you need to do is plug the player into the remote via a 3.5mm plug and you are good to go.

With such a large screen and MP3 capability, you would think that the Premier 3 has the potential to be an awesome portable media player—but Sony Ericsson inexplicably shot themselves in the foot with a MicroSD slot that can only handle 2GB cards (there is only 50MB onboard). What a waste. Pricing and release information have not been announced. [Impress via Newlaunches and Akihabara News]

The screen swivels around a central hinge to hide the phone’s regular numerical keyboard. Through a Yamaha piano app program, you can also play and record various other instruments on-the-go. Sounds like a fun concept, but it’s hard to tell if the phone’s specced out enough to handle that kind of program smoothly.

Also included in package: motion sensing, an “urban fitness program,” a 5MP camera and 500MB of internal memory. Per usual, only available in Japan for now. [KDDI au]

The phone’s 3.1-inch display is the first of its kind to have 3D-capabilities and can be swiveled horizontally to be more TV-like. There’s not a lot of content being offered to accompany the phone right now, which is just as well since Hitachi doesn’t recommend that people use the 3D feature for too long. Kids under the age of 6 shouldn’t use it at all.

Besides the crazy stereoscopic screen, the Wooo also comes with a 5MP camera and a “Global Passport” that will connect you to KDDI au’s network from anywhere in the world except Thailand, Guam and Canada. It’ll be available in three colours by April—in Japan only, of course. [KDDI au]

Well, for what it is, at least. there have been smaller gimmick phones for quite some time, but none with a solid featureset like this. As a Walkman phone, it comes with 4GB of flash memory, a well-tested and usable media player interface, and when closed, illuminated touch controls on the bottom front bezel. A Japan-only handset for now, you can also expect mobile TV and integrated domestic music stores.

The only obvious problem with a phone like this is, well, using it. Derek Zoolander’s halcyon tiny-phone-toting days came before we were all texting each other like crazy, an experience I can’t imagine being too enjoyable on the Xmini. [Akihabara]