On the software side, there's a

User interface

Menus are all icon-driven and arranged in a format that shouldn't give much cause for confusion; there are also several softkeys that in the standby screen allow you to call up the mail, web browser, Java application menu, and phonebook directly without going through the menus. Pushing the shutter button on the side of the camera is like hitting Start on a Windows PC, popping up a menu of applications. Flipping the screen round and folding it flat brings up a simplified "tap menu" of pen-friendly apps such as the web browser and memo/graphics pad.

There are some nicely-thought-out features, like the ability to search the phonebook by most frequently called or emailed entry. There's also a softkey assigned to the camera in screens where you might want to use it, like the phonebook (so you can snap a pic of someone as you enter their details), and there's easy access to both camera and e-mail functions while you're on the phone, which comes in handy if you're talking on the headset and want to zap someone a picture (FOMA allows you to send mail and browse the web while you're talking). Some aspects of the UI are less friendly, however, like the existence of lots of different folders for storing images depending on whether they were taken with the camera, downloaded, edited, and so forth. You also need to transfer photos from the miniSD card to the phone if you want to edit them. In some less-used menus you're left peering at minuscule, overlong text descriptions attached to the icons, which can be frustrating.

Overall, the layout of the interface is fairly well done given the number of settings and applications. This is a relatively power-user phone, though, and it would confuse the hell out of your mum.

Software

There's no mp3 player, unfortunately, but there is support for i-motion video clips, which means you can use QuickTime Pro to convert MP3s into audio-only MPEG-4 files for playback. You can also save video clips onto a miniSD card for playback on the phone, provided you first format the card on the phone to create a directory structure and then save the files in the right place using a PC.

Unfortunately, making your own MPEG-4 files work as ringtones is verboten (this is not the fault of the F900iT, but bear with us for a moment). While you can download chaku-uta (song ringtone) audio files from approved content sites, from which DoCoMo receives Y9 per Y100 of revenue, they don't disclose the whole spec to the rest of us. The result is that, if you check the file information for your own clips via the phone, you'll see that they're all tagged as "No" under "Selectable as ringtone?". A few valiant hackers have apparently figured out how to tweak the files using a binary editor to remedy this, but it doesn't work for us. Given that it's only the enthusiasts among us who are going to try rolling their own, the potential for abuse seems slight, and the content protection and filesharing prevention arguments don't really apply; the limitation is just a nuisance. (Incidentally, see Phillip Torrone's how-to on making MP3 ringtones on a PC if you happen to be outside Japan and have a phone that supports them.)

Java games run smoothly on the F900iT; there's a perceptible improvement in performance versus the Panasonic P2102V we previously owned, reflecting a hike in the hardware and memory specs. Several applications come preinstalled, including a Dragon Quest-style maze/adventure, FreeCell, a version of Game of Life, and the aforementioned TV remote control.

Best of the applications is the combined set of photo editing and graphics tools, which allow you to rotate, crop, eliminate the background to a shot of a close-up object, adjust contrast and colour, and apply effects such as fisheye. You can also add text captions or "stamp" icons. Popping a photo open in the graphics app allows you to draw directly onto the image using a variety of colours, brush types, and fills; there's also a transparent brush to erase the uppermost layer of an image. You can equally well draw original images, with the obvious use being to scribble a quick map to email to someone.

Camera

We were initially surprised at how average shots taken with the 1.28-megapixel camera looked, but it turned out this was due to the default quality setting--upping the resolution to "fine" from "standard" produced far better results. The shot of the Bluetooth headset below was taken with the F900iT, as was the random pic to the right. It's possible to set brightness and contrast, and choose from eight "scene settings" and eight image sizes, from 96 x 72 to 960 x 1,280. There's a 12X digital zoom, but things get nasty pretty quickly.

The camera also includes a barcode and QR code reader function, which we tried earlier on a QR code we generated for a post the other day. Bringing the camera near, we'd barely got the image in frame and were just about to steady the phone when it chimed to say it'd read the information.

Video shooting is limited to 176 x 144 pixels in size, even if you choose to save to the miniSD card. That's less than the more video-oriented models in the 900i range, although we suspect that video is still a minor feature for most people given that the heavy compression doesn't make for much more than throwaway images. Maybe we'll be sending video mail when more people we know get FOMA phones.

Touchpanel screen

The parallax on the touchpanel display takes some getting used to; there's quite a severe offset between some of the onscreen buttons and the place you actually need to hit to depress them, and unless I'm mistaken there are some occasions where a tiny and hard-to-hit down arrow that appears at the bottom edge of the screen is actually impossible to push using the stylus; the "select" key above it inevitably depresses instead. Scrolling in the web browser is fine due to the presence of large up and down arrow buttons at the bottom of the screen, but in the graphics editor it can be a pain to hit the tiny arrows on the scrollbars. We find tilting the screen away slightly ups the accuracy a bit.

Web browsing and scribbling memos in PDA mode is something we've got very attached to this week; our only frustration is the need to tap the screen to scroll. Other FOMA phones (like our previous P2102V, for example) allowed you to use buttons on the side to jump up and down; the F900iT has a rocker-style up-down button that's mainly used for the zoom, and it would have been great to have this function as a scroll key. As it is, you can't surf one-handed (not, just to head off any lewd suspicions, that we're surfing one-handed websites or anything); a periodic tap with the stylus is required.

Bluetooth headset

This is a first for Japan, so unfortunately we're unable to say anything comparative about sound quality and so forth. A friend we spoke to using the headset commented that the sound was rather dull at his end. Setup is a touch fiddly--if you miss the one line in the headset manual that tells you how to put the handset into "search waiting" mode, you'll be fruitlessly hunting through menus and the phone manuals forever.

The key thing to note is that this is a big leap forward for FOMA usability, as it's now possible to really take advantage of the phones' ability to multitask. We're not at the level of familiarity (or mental dexterity) required to email as we talk just yet, but being able to scribble a memo or enter a number into the phone book is a definite plus. We can easily conceive of things like checking a restaurant guide on the web while we wrangle about where to go for dinner, too.

Summing up

As should be apparent from the amount of detail we go into above, we're pretty taken with the F900iT. DoCoMo has finally brought its FOMA handsets up to speed with the 900i series, something that's been brought home to us both by playing with the big F and by people's reaction to it. A guy in the lift buttonholed us to ask if what we were playing with was the new Fujitsu and whether it was any good, and the Bluetooth headset has provoked numerous comments (even if the predominant one has been "you look like Data from Star Trek with that thing on"). We'd also note one more thing that didn't fit into the categories above: reception is extremely good. Our P2102V used to go out of range in the lift at the office, whereas with the F900iT we can browse the web without a hitch all the way up to the 40-somethingth floor. It's a touch on the large side and takes some getting used to, but there are enough features, and among them enough that work really well, to make this highly recommended.

[FOMA 900i product page (Japanese)]