May begins each year in Japan with Golden Week, a week-long holiday for most people, thanks to four public holidays, three of which are bunched together. It’s a great chance to relax or get out of the city during the first big holiday of the year after the new year break. For many companies, the weeks before and after the holidays also mark the start of the build-up to the summer sales season.It’s the first decent chance we get to see some of the upcoming new products, such as NTT DoCoMo’s motion-sensitive cell phones. Digital video, both consumer-generated and recorded from the TV, continues to be a big theme and something that many of Japan’s consumer electronics companies are now pushing heavily in the hope it will be embraced by consumers.NTT DoCoMo Motion-Sensitive Cell Phone: Mix the Nintendo Wii and a cell phone and what do you get? Something like NTT DoCoMo’s new line of motion-sensitive cell phones. In a boxing game, users can throw punches or duck, and their movements are picked up by the phone’s camera. In another game, the phone can be tilted in different directions to guide an onscreen ball through a maze. To be sure, the cell phones aren’t nearly as reactive as the Wii console. You need to make a motion, such as a punch, then wait a second for the punch to get registered on the phone screen, but it’s a start. The handsets come from Mitsubishi, Panasonic, and Sharp and will be available in Japan only in May or June. Prices vary with incentives. Sony Memory Stick camcorder: Meet the HDR-CX7, Sony’s smallest high-definition camcorder to date. The camera, which is due to go on sale in the United States in June, records 1080i high-definition video directly to a Memory Stick Pro Duo card. Until now Sony’s camcorders have relied on MiniDV tape, DVD discs, or hard-disk drives to store video, but the memory card slot and associated electronics take up less space and mean a smaller, lighter camera. But it doesn’t come without disadvantages. Memory cards are quite expensive, and users will be able to store only about 30 minutes of video on a 4GB card in the camera’s highest-quality mode. Behind the lens is a 3-megapixel image sensor, and the camera can also capture 6-megapixel still images, Sony said. Other features include a 10X optical zoom lens and a 2.7-inch wide-screen, touch-sensitive LCD monitor. The CX7 weighs 450 grams and measures 69 millimeters by 67mm by 129mm. It will cost about $1,200.Sharp HDTV Recorder: As consumers continue to snap-up high-definition TVs, Sharp continues to push out HD capable hard-disk recorders. The latest, the DV-AVC52, combines a DVD drive and VHS deck with a 250GB hard-disk recorder. The machine will copy your old VHS tapes onto DVD so that you can finally dump another relic of the 20th century; you’ll also be able to get up to 31 hours of HDTV on the disks. But like almost all hard-disk recorders, it remains stuck there. Pretty much the only way to store HD content is on Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD, but since this doesn’t have either, you’ll have to keep it on the disk — and thus lose some recording space — or transfer it to DVD at standard definition and lose the high-definition picture. It will be available only in Japan.Toshiba expandable HDD recorder TV set: Toshiba’s latest series of flat-screen LCD televisions goes one better than other hard-disk video recorders by offering the user room to expand the storage space. Typically you’re stuck with the drive that ships with the TV (or recorder), but the H3000 series sets sport an eSATA (external serial ATA) connector on the back for plugging in an external disk drive. The sets ship with an internal 300GB drive, and the expansion socket should work with any eSATA drive. They are available now in sizes from 32 to 52 inches. The 32-inch model is available for around ¥160,000 ($1,331). It will be available only in Japan. Samsung Symbian smartphone: The latest Symbian OS-based smartphone from South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, the SGH-i400, will hit Europe in July. The phone has an uncluttered face, so it doesn’t look like a traditional all-buttons-and-switches smartphone, but its Symbian base means it can be loaded with applications to make it just as powerful. A full Web browser comes pre-installed, and there’s Bluetooth, a 2-megapixel camera, and stereo speakers. The GSM triband phone has a 2.3-inch display. The price will depend on operator incentives. It will be available first in Russia and then throughout Europe. Launch dates for other markets have not been decided.Sony Vaio Type-G with flash: Sony is adding a flash disk to the options available with its lightweight Vaio Type-G laptop. Customers will see the price of a Type G jump by ¥65,000 when they choose a 32GB flash drive over a 40GB hard disk drive, so what’s the benefit? It’s quieter and uses less power — both good for laptops — and it makes the Type G even lighter. The machine already holds the crown as the lightest 12-inch-class display laptop on the market at 898 grams, and the flash disk options shaves 39 grams off that. It’s available now to order from Sony online in Japan. A machine based on an Intel Celeron M 443 (1.20GHz) processor with the flash drive will cost ¥229,800. There are no current plans to offer it overseas.Coming soon: Samsung dual-format HD disc player: Samsung plans to release an optical disc player this year that will play Blu-ray Disc and the rival HD DVD format. After putting its support behind Blu-ray, and thus contributing to the format war that has left consumers confused, the company now wants to be the public’s best friend. “Our main concern is with the consumer and not a particular technology,” it said announcing the player. The BD-UP5000 should be available before the end of 2007 in the United States and could be available in Europe even earlier. No precise launch dates or pricing were announced. Technology Industry