As if to reinforce our last posting that Asia always has cooler cellphone tech first, we discovered this bit of next-gen craziness:

“Most games and many other applications are written in 3D although the final image is shown in 2D,” says Ian Thompson, director of business development at Sharp Laboratories of Europe. “In nature humans see the world in 3D and yet we have become accustomed to seeing flat images”

That may be true today, but researchers in many laboratories, including Sharp’s, have their eyes set on the next generation of 3D technology. If mobile displays are necessarily limited by length and width, the only option is to increase their depth. And unlike the 3D movies of yesterday (and even today), the new 3D displays don’t require any special eyewear. Sharp is leading the charge, having supplied mobile phones equipped with “glasses-free” 3D displays to NTT DoCoMo for two years. The company claims that their first 3D handset “sold over 1.5 million units in the first 6 months of sales, more than all previous 3D products combined.” Of course, Sharp is not the only one convinced that mobile 3D is ready for prime time.