Kyocera Launching Urban Progresso Tissue Conduction Phone in Japan This Week

Following its introduction as a prototype earlier this month in New Orleans, LA at CTIA, Kyocera is making good on its promise to debut its tissue conduction handset to the Japanese market. The phone, dubbed Urban Progresso, will debut on Japanese WiMax carrier KDDI starting on May 30th, according to The Verge.

The phone uses tissue conduction technology, which is similar to how bone conduction technology works. Rather than requiring a proper fit with your jaw bone, tissue conduction allows users to simply place the phone on soft tissue–such as their cheeks or any region of their face close to their ears–and sound waves will travel and allow a person to clearly hear a call even in loud environments. This would be great for users who need to answer a call at a concert, construction zone, or other noisy environments.

I’ve got some time to play with a prototype of Kyocera’s technology and it works remarkably well. You’ll still need complementary technology–such as noise cancellation microphones–to make the experience complete. With tissue conduction, it will allow you to hear the other party even while you’re in a noisy environment, but without technologies such as noise cancellation the other party will also hear all the background noise in your noisy environment as well when you speak to them.

It’s unclear when and if this technology will land Stateside.

Press release:

KDDI, Okinawa Cellular from the date of 30 May 2012, will be the first in the world to design quality of URBANO series “Smart Sonic Receiver” will begin simultaneously throughout the country on the release of “URBANO PROGRESSO” with a (Note).

“URBANO PROGRESSO” is a high-speed Internet in addition to the features of classic Japanese and One Seg “+ WiMAX” enjoy, Osaifu-Keitai ®, infrared, and waterproof, available in the world by addressing Global Passport CDMA, GSM, UMTS, to GPRS you can.

In addition, earthquake early warning, disaster and evacuation information, and support was added to the new tsunami warning to “emergency e-mail bulletin.”

Start date sales in each region, please refer to the au website.