Actually the specs look very nice according the Fujitsu press release:
http://www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2007/20070516-01.html

Also, that screen, while only being 5.6″, does indeed appear to be running at 1024×600 widescreen. Very nice. Hopefully someone will get their hands on one soon to let us know how it really performs!

kamikun, actually if you look at the pictures the keys for switching between input mode are still there (in green letters) but there are no Japanese letters written on the keys.

Really cool device. However, I think everyone is missing something.

I think it looks freakishly similar to the old Clie device(s) from Sony:

http://www.brighthand.com/images/Sony_UX50_5.jpg

Do you guys agree? I loved that form factor…

PJE – I think the reason for some of the “non-critical” keys is that the Japanese release has to have a number of them to allow for all 53 Japanese “letters” (hiragana) to be fitted to the standard keyboard. Even though most Japanese spell out their typing phonetically in Romaji (Roman letters) everyone still expects the option of typing in straight Japanese too.
So, for the keyboards to be the same in both the West and in Japan, you’re going to need those keys. If you want a visual of what I’m trying to say, take a look at these shots http://www.ne.jp/asahi/mayumi/watanabe/who/keybd/keybd.htm
I’m sure the same is true of the Korean release. Hangul has about the same number of “syllabics” as Japanese.

Looks like this is gonna be the first mainstream release of a UMPC for the Japanese market. Check out the notice here http://www.wince.ne.jp/snap/cnBoard.asp?PID=2451 .
There are two prices listed; one for a 512M and one for a 1G RAM configuration, 14,400 and 16,400 yen. About $1200 and $1360 US.

Looks like a nice device.

Why can’t manufacturers standardize on a new reduced size keyboard. I look at the keyboard on this device and see that a complete column of keys could be removed (resulting in wider keys for the remainder) if some of the non-critical punctuation were added to the letter keys with an option select key).

For this to work however there would need to be a standard layout to aid switching between devices.

Just a thought…