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NTT DoCoMo will next month ship a music player capable of downloading songs from its 3G FOMA mobile phone network. Yes, it's a phone too, but unlike music-friendly mobiles like Motorola's Slvr and Rokr, the Music Porter X is designed to spend as much time hooked up to a hi-fi as placed in a pocket.

Kitted out in a militaristic 'safari green' hue, the Music Porter X contains a mere 1GB of memory, but it supports Sony's ATRAC 3 Plus format which generally delivers better quality at low bit rates than formats like AAC and MP3 do, both of which are also supported by the device. There's an FM radio on board too.

The handset uses Macromedia Flash as the foundation for its user interface, and it ships with a series of rugged, military looking apps full of knobs and dials - there's even a mock-up reel-to-reel screen - in keeping with the casing colour. It almost makes you want to call in airstrikes...

The device sports a big, 2.8in 240 x 400, 262,144-colour display and a 320,000-pixel camera. It weighs 136g and measures 10.9 x 5 x 2.4cm. DoCoMo said it will deliver 170 minutes' talk time, 90 minutes' videocall time and 20 hours' continuous music playback. The Music Porter X ships with a cradle, headphones and a remote control. DoCoMo said a Bose-speaker equipped dock will be made available too.

The device ties in to DoCoMo's online music download channels for which it charges ¥980 ($8.40) a month. There's a ¥2,500 ($21) joining fee, but the cellco appears to be waiving that until 30 June. The Music Porter X goes on sale in Japan on 8 April. ®

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