The folks over at Engadget caught a whiff of FCC compliance testing being performed on a new cellphone from Sharp.

Presumably intended for the Japanese market, the Sharp SH-01A is clamshell-design phone that sports, among other features, an 8 megapixel CCD sensor and a 28mm wide-angle lens.

Beyond its imaging prowess, the phone is also rumored to support Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound.

This latest move away from cellphone manufacturers' reliance on low-cost, poorly performing CMOS sensors and to CCD imager technology roughly equivalent to what you'd fine in a budget compact camera probably won't make it to the U.S. in the form seen here, but it's yet another example of just how near on the horizon compact-rivalling camera phone technology really is.

Engadget has the full scoop.