dottocomu

New Japan carrier, new Windows Mobile handheld

Today sees a new carrier enter Japan's gorillapolistic cellphone market; eMobile, the cellular subsidiary of ADSL infrastructure company eAccess, is sliding in with a data-only HSDPA service that'll start this March and grow a voice element in 2008.

For the moment, they're offering one standalone Windows Mobile 5 gadget, the Sharp EM ONE, which looks to be a remix of the WinMob units Sharp's provided to Willcom thus far; it sports Bluetooth 1.2, 802.11b/g, OneSeg digital TV support, a 4.1-inch wide-VGA screen, and a "dual-slider" keyboard that can expose either the full QWERTY goods HTC-style or simply a directional/enter key, as desired. It will support voice calls once the network does, and it looks like Skype can fill in some of the gap for the meantime. (The remainder of the current range are CF/Express Card/USB devices for laptop use.)

Service costs run about Y5,980 per month before discounts, with the initial cost for an EM ONE determined by whether you opt to remain unfettered by contractual obligations (Y95,000), or go for a one-year contract (Y71,000) or two years (Y39,800).

Voice services will be supported in their initial phases by a roaming arrangement with NTT DoCoMo to provide nationwide coverage; it's not entirely clear at present how extensive eMobile's own network is.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

POP mail on a DoCoMo htc z

This is likely the most obscure post we've ever written, but on the offchance it may help someone: if you're using a DoCoMo business phone (the Motorola M1000 or htc z are the models currently available)and DoCoMo's mopera ISP, you may find you're having trouble sending mail from other POP accounts.

The reason is simple: mopera blocks port 25 for mail sending. However, there's hope: check with your provider if they allow you to send via port 587 or 465. If they do, open up your mail account settings and add ":587" or ":465" after your sendmail server's address (we also had to tag the "send using SSL" option). And away you go.

[Via Windows Mobile powered Smartphone Help & How Tos (Microsoft Windows Mobile, Windows CE, Mobile Computing, Mobile device), and several conversations with bemused DoCoMo tech support people and one great bloke who knew exactly what he was doing]

DoCoMo's well-timed fightback

With the introduction of number portability imminent, DoCoMo has unveiled six new handsets that--for the first time in a while--look like it is still interested in remaining top dog.

The 903i series, announced late yesterday Japan time, finally adopts GPS in many models, updates the FeliCa chips, brings in HSDPA and OneSeg on more phones, and offers support for Napster's new music download service. In short, there is a lot here that should keep existing subscribers where they are and help encourage defections from competitors.

Most symbolic of the abrupt and aggressive shift in DoCoMo's stance may be the SH903iTV, the second of Sharp's "Aquos Keitai" models. The first Aquos phone was Softbank's jewel in the crown, with its unconventional screen-flipping act brought centre-stage in TV commercials to emphasise how "unexpected" the new company was. DoCoMo has hit back with a bit of good old Crocodile Dundee-style one-upmanship ("that's not an Aquos keitai; this is an Aquos keitai") by getting Sharp to create a version that boosts the screen size considerably and makes Softbank's look second-class. The real challenge, of course, will be to see whether it can slow au's advance, and in terms of brand image the latter has the advantage, with DoCoMo coming across as the safe, staid choice while au has all the thrills.

[Read: DoCoMo press release]

Softbank gets it right (where others stumble) with the X01HT

DoCoMo and Softbank Mobile have both got their sticky paws on HTC's Hermes and are about to launch it in Japan as, respectively, the hTc Z and the X01HT. Softbank's version gets the edge on DoCoMo's by supporting HSDPA, though the network only covers metro Tokyo and a few major cities at present, and for some reason it can only suck down data at 1.8Mbps, half the service's rated max of 3.6Mbps.

All that dry stuff aside, the real question here is why the two companies are selling essentially the same phone for prices that are almost Y50,000 apart. Softbank's model comes in around Y20,000 with a two-year contract, while DoCoMo is selling the hTcZ through its docomo.biz site rather than usual retail channels, to existing subscribers only, and wants you to stump up Y73,000 for the privilege.

Sure, there's a question here of DoCoMo not wanting to get out of bed unless you're willing to sign on for the full Exchange Server push email deal and a bushel of handsets. But that's no reason to give such a monumental shaft to the individual customers who must now be positively priapic at the thought of a decent smartphone that works in Japan, after the miserable Motorola M1000. Why not stuff a few down the retail channel at a reasonable price and risk being pleasantly surprised if you shift a few units?

We're hesitant to switch to Softbank Mobile just to get our hands on a better phone, given the poor rep it has for network coverage, but seriously, if DoCoMo keeps pulling this lumbering mammoth act in the age of number portability then it deserves to get its ass filled full of spears by more aggressive and lightfooted pursuers.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese]

DoCoMo to launch video voicemail

NTT DoCoMo announced yesterday that they're to launch a video voicemail service on September 20. 68 of its 3G FOMA handsets support the service; if you are making a videophone call and get redirected to voicemail you will now have the option to follow onscreen prompts and leave a video message, of up to 3 mins in length. SMS is used to inform you of waiting messages.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

Willcom W-Zero3 [es] in the garage: Part Two

Before we proceed with reviewing the [es], bear with us as we digress into the issue of battery life. We hadn't envisaged launching in to the second part of this review with a complaint, but this is something we need to deal with up front.

First, the spec sheet: Sharp claims that the [es]'s battery gives 7 hours of talktime and 500 hours of standby (300 if the signal-strength LED on the front of the case is left lit). The manual also claims that around 3.5 hours is needed for a full charge, and doesn't make any mention that we could immediately see of needing to do the old 16-hour super-charge and drain-to-nothing routine that used to be recommended.

On Sunday, after charging the phone for perhaps 5-6 hours, we downloaded Skype onto it, set up and checked a POP email account, and then turned the phone off overnight. On Monday morning, we turned it on at around 9am, checked email a couple of times, and didn't do much else. At 2.30pm, we got a low battery warning (from a look at the power management settings, this indicated that the battery had around 1/6th remaining).

We switched off and took the [es] home to charge. We gave it around a 10 hour charge on Monday night, used it to check mail a few times and write a short blog post on Tuesday, then turned it off in the evening. On Wednesday, we switched it back on in the morning and checked mail. At midday, low battery warning.

On each occasion we charged the phone we noticed that no matter how long we left it, the battery charging light remained on. We couldn't immediately determine whether the light does switch off to indicate that the battery is fully charged, or not. This morning, seeing that the light remained on after a further 10+ hours charging, we decided to leave the phone at home on charge all day to see what happened.

Clearly things like the front-panel LED and keyboard backlight have an impact on battery life, but we had already disabled both before we used the phone on Tuesday. One other possibility that occurs to us is the phenomenon we noted a few times when waking the phone from standby, where it appeared to be in the midst of a data transfer--we're not sure whether this was to check mail or for some other reason, and it seemed to automatically disconnect again after a short period. However, presumably this would drain the battery if any data were being shifted back and forth. As we're not using the phone for voice calls as yet, we also disabled the SIM for good measure to see if this gained us any extra battery life, but as we were already running low on juice at that point the results were inconclusive.

To sum up, though, we have a nagging feeling that we're not simply missing a setting that would magically give us the promised battery life; we have to wonder whether the official figures themselves are not massively overstated. We'll reserve final judgement until after we've run the phone through an all-day charge, however.

Next, some more interesting stuff about the general look and feel.

Willcom W-Zero3 [es] in the garage: Part One

After a few months using a DoCoMo M1000 as our regular phone we started to get ticked off with the locked-up OS, bad camera, poor WiFi reception and lack of an all-you-can eat data plan. When Sharp's W-Zero3 [es] Windows Mobile smartphone was released, we knew we'd found something interesting enough to consider switching, and ultimately gadget lust overrode our general distrust of Windows enough to cave in and pick one up.

First off, we should note that this beast is big. To put it in context, the screen is the same 2.8 inches as an M1000, but with a numeric keypad tacked on below. It's also about a third again as thick. However, the bulk is offset by a surprisingly light weight -- without the battery or Willcom's fairly chunky W-SIM module in it's barely there, and even with all hands on board it comes out to 175g. That might prove tiring for long phone calls, but in two-handed use it's no bother at all.

For all our misgivings about the OS, Windows Mobile proves pleasingly snappy in operation, though unsurprisingly performance takes a hit if you run multiple applications at once. The usual suspects are represented in the software department - pocket versions of the Office suite, Windows Media Player, a PDF viewer, and so forth. We were able to install Skype and log on with no problems, though the phone's 128kbps connection speed doesn't appear to be up to making phone calls. For those, we're waiting on the late-August release of a miniSD WiFi adapter from IBS Japan.

Screen, keyboard and camera are all good, with the first of these the particular standout; the 2.8-inch, 640x480 screen is very clear, if a touch dark. The keyboard is all clicky plastic buttons, but perfectly adequate for thumbing your way through shortish mails or blog posts. The camera, too, belies its 1.31 megapixel spec and does well even in low light, though a little graininess creeps in in really dark settings.

Battery life and text input are our only concerns thus far, which we'll get to in subsequent posts.

Citizen's Bluetooth watch

Following on the heels of Seiko's recent Bluetooth watch concept come Citizen, who are set to beat Seiko to the punch with a shipping product. The i:VIRT, which hits stores in Japan on July 7, is an odd-looking beast--"retro", "designed without much consideration for aesthetics" and "fugly" are some of the words that come to mind--but whatever; it syncs with your phone via the Bluetooth handsfree profile to buzz you when a call comes in (with caller display if you've beamed your phonebook to the watch in advance), and gives you the ability to put callers on hold or hang up via the watch. It also warns you when you're about to lose your Bluetooth connection, the intention being to stop you leaving your cellphone behind.

The i:VIRT draws its juice from a rechargeable battery that's charged via a contactless stand. Battery life is around one monnth with vibration/Bluetooth turned off, or about five days with them on assuming 20 30-second calls made/received per day and 10 checks of the time. It apparently will still run for a day even if there's too little power to use the Bluetooth.

Size is 40 x 42 x 14.6mm, weight 55g. Price expected to be around Y27,000.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

New DoCoMo handsets -- including first HSDPA model

DoCoMo graces us with eight additions to the FOMA range this afternoon, including its first HSDPA handset, the NEC N902iX HIGH-SPEED (download speeds are stated at "up to 3.6Mbps"). Common features include network phonebook backup and protection via fingerprint, face or voiceprint recognition, and some phones include a Chaku-Uta Full or WMA-compatible media player. Another new service is "Chaku-Moji", which allows you to enter a 10-character message prior to calling someone and have it appear on their screen when the phone rings.

In addition, the N902iX supports a service DoCoMo is calling "Music Channel", which takes a leaf out of the KDDI book by providing content downloads that take place at a set time overnight.

Read: NTT DoCoMo press release

Blackberry for Japan in 2006?

Canada.com has an article out today that cites a UBS analyst saying RIM will launch the Blackberry in Japan within 2006. This seems to confirm rumours we've been hearing for a while about Vodafone Japan bringing the Blackberry here; most recently, we heard that the devices should have been available to pilot users already but had been stalled for an unspecified period by a problem of some kind (whether hardware or software we're not sure). As DoCoMo is supposedly collaborating on the localization and Japanese-language interface (we're taking this version of things with a pinch of salt), it could be that their quality-control is what's slowing things down--recall the recent example of Nokia's NM850iG, which was pulled immediately prior to release and didn't appear again for a month or so.

[Read: RIM believed ready for BlackBerry launch in Japan by end of year]

Four new designer phones from DoCoMo

DoCoMo briefly stopped shooting itself in the foot yesterday afternoon to release four new phones, three of which were produced in collaboration with independent designers. The Sharp SH702iD and NEC N702iD handsets share a similar thin, squared-off shape that apes the kind of design ethic we've seen in KDDI's designer phones. That's not to say we don't like the visuals, though; we're particularly fond of the long, thin subdisplay running the length of the N702iD, and its revolutionary use of normal colour designations (red, black, silver and white) rather than the usual verbose descriptions (kudos also to the SH702i for coming in British Green, though). The Sharp is also the lightest phone we've seen in a while, at a paltry 89g.

The Sharp and NEC phones don't overdose on the features, but they do both have music players and come with PC software for transferring tunes; the NEC handset seems to win out on this front by eschewing the DRM of the SD-Music standard used for the Sharp unit.

The Fujitsu F702iD has a more rounded shape that's perhaps not as striking, though it makes up with a range of features common to the higher-end handsets -- including the Suica mobile payment/train pass system, a PDF viewer, fingerprint sensor, and so forth.

The P702i -- the only non-designer handset in the range -- comes off looking rather dowdy in comparison with its peers, though as compensation it does include DoCoMo's push-to-talk technology.

All of these are out on February 24 in Japan.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

Plantronics Bluetooth stereo headphone mike

Plantronics Japan have announced their Pulsar 590A Bluetooth stereo headset is now available here in electronics retailers and Apple Stores, and online via Amazon Japan. This has been out in the US for a while -- MobileMag reviewed it last December--but it bears repeating that this looks like a worthwhile unit to consider if you want something that'll pair up with your phone and audio player and cut out the music when you answer calls. One caveat is that the profiles it uses for streaming music aren't supported by most cellphones yet -- K-Tai Watch reckons DoCoMo's new Panasonic P902i is about the only one in Japan that does -- though it does come with a Bluetooth adapter whose cable terminates in a 3.5mm jack, so compatibility with audio players ceases to be a problem. Amazon Japan has it priced at Y19,800.

[K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

DoCoMo to sell mediocre Nokia handset

One hates to pound on DoCoMo, but their hobby recently does seem to be firing at both feet with an Uzi in either hand. The latest handset to join their lineup is the NM850iG, a revamped Nokia 6630.

First, the good news: It's a dual-mode W-CDMA/GSM device with Bluetooth.

Now, the bad: First, positioning. DoCoMo's current FOMA phone lineups are the 700 and 900 series. Assigning numbers outside its primary ranges is DoCoMo shorthand for "low-commitment, poor-fit-with-main-strategy device that is doomed to live a short life and die alone". Second, videophone. They give the phone video calling capabilities but only put a camera on the back. So not only can you not see your interlocutor, you also can't be sure that you have the phone aimed accurately enough for them to see you. Genius. Third, software. The Java support is comparable with the first generation of DoCoMo phones to support Java programs, the 503 series. You must be joking. Fourth, differentiation. Vodafone Japan carries a similar 6630-looking model already.

We'll spare them any ciriticism of the getting-old-fast form factor and the ho-hum 1.3 megapixel camera.

Why did they bother?

[Read: NTT DoCoMo: Press Release Article - NTT DoCoMo to Market 3G FOMA NM850iG Handset]

DoCoMo demos HSDPA downloads

Following last week's showcasing of three prototype HSDPA handsets, K-Tai Watch reports on a DoCoMo press demo that put NEC's current FOMA handset side-by-side with its HSDPA model. Rather than emphasising speed up front, the focus was on quality, with the HSDPA handset able to stream a 1.8MB video file in the same time it took for the FOMA handset to pull down 434KB (the HSDPA handset is shown on the right here). They also did a straight FTP speed test, which showed HSDPA as capable of shifting 5MB in 14 seconds, with transfer speeds peaking at 3.2Mbps. That's a little under the stated max of 3.6Mbps and will likely drop off further in actual usage situations, however.

Now all they need are some service ideas to make use of the extra bandwidth, and a bit more zing on the handset front -- some more risk-taking, in short. The fatter pipe is all well and good, but au still seems to have all the good ideas when it comes to content.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

The Remocon Saucer: Appliance control by videophone

Some days, a gadget comes by that just puzzles us. The Remocon Saucer is the latest. It's an infrared learning remote that can be accessed from your cellphone to control household appliances from wherever you are, which is all fine; it's the way it does it that has us scratching our heads. First, the communication is done by hooking up a second FOMA handset or data card to the Saucer, meaning you pay a second month's line rental (which we suspect is part of the point); and second, you're required to make a videophone call (expensive, which may also be the point) to operate the Saucer.

Sugiyama Electron, the makers, don't list the product on their site yet (though we were entertained by their flashing maracas and odd-looking theremin), so we're unable to establish whether the thing has anything in it that would explain the need to videophone in your remote control commands. Overall, though, our biggest question is why we would want one of these rather than something that combines the same functions with a webcam, hooks into our home network, and can be controlled via a cellphone web browser (if someone would be kind enough to make one)?

Out soon in Japan for Y12,000.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

DoCoMo shows HSDPA cellphone prototypes

K-Tai Watch reports that DoCoMo has unveiled three prototypes for its 2Q06-launching HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) service. HSDPA is W-CDMA with a firework up its rear; downlink speeds can theoretically reach 14.4Mbps versus the 384Kbps that DoCoMo's current FOMA service achieves. However, the current prototypes max out at 3.6Mbps, as (so the good folks at K-Tai Watch explain) DoCoMo has chosen to go with Category 6 of HSDPA, Category 10 being required to get the top speeds. Whether this will feed through to the production models is unclear.

Among the prototypes, news of note is that Motorola is responsible for one of the three (pictured right), and it's based on the RAZR V3x--which is a handset we'd be pleased to see make it to Japan, providing DoCoMo resists the urge to downgrade its functionality and lock it up like they did with the A1000/M1000.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

FOMA M1000 plays Doom

Yes, we can officially confirm that the FOMA M1000 plays Doom (we've actually been showing this off around the place since last week and are only just getting around to posting this, having been busy, er, working). Just install the SIS file from this site, rustle yourself up the requisite WAD files (we hear something called "Google" might be of help here), and you're ready to go. Install the SIS file and run the program once, which will create a file called media files/documents/DOOM. Throw your WAD files in there, and hey presto.

We were expecting crappy framerates, juddering performance and the occasional crash, but no; the game runs as smoothly--or possibly more smoothly--than it did on our (crappy, no-name) 486 all those years ago. Getting the soft keys that usually serve to jump you straight to one of the phone's inbuilt applications to give up their default function and strafe or frag instead was a little fiddly, however: we found that the Home key (the default strafe button) invariably would snap us out of the game, so we tried assigning the speakerphone/voice recorder key instead. It didn't work on a first try, but after being dumped into the voice recorder once and then heading back to the game, it worked as planned. As the particular port we're using is designed for the Motorola A925 and A1000 (the latter being the M1000's close relative) there may be the odd quirk here and there that we have yet to find; caveat installer and all that.

Incidentally, we found in the process of fiddling around with various ports of Doom that the M1000 locks you out of access to the System folder -- in a very DoCoMo-like bit of hackfoiling fuddy-duddiness, both the phone itself and the PC-based memory apps only give you access to the media file folders (unless our particular PC setup is somehow affecting us here). Therefore, make sure you use the Doom port linked to above and don't try other Symbian UIQ ports--we had a fiddly time uninstalling a previous one after it turned out not to fly on the M1000.

Kaga Electronics' WiFi/PHS phone

We first saw this phone as a mockup over a year ago, when it was billed as a Fujitsu-developed unit that'd be coming out in the autumn. It now looks like it'll be coming out this autumn (September, to be precise) as Kaga Electronics' WiPCom1000. Specs are much as originally billed -- it'll be running on Windows CE.NET 4.2 (the planned Linux version appears to have been ditched), have a QVGA display, plus a CompactFlash slot on the rear that will take a PHS (a Japan-only short-range digital cellphone format) card from Willcom. Size is a fairly compact 48.3 x 17.1 x 13.4 mm, weight is a lightish 110g. Software includes a web browser and email client, and a developers' kit will be made available.

Pricing is a budget-decimating Y90,000 per phone, though the intention is to sell the handsets to companies as part of a VoIP solution rather than through consumer channels, which leaves us slightly sad, but considerably less poor.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

NTT Com's cellphone-as-bank-account lock service

NTT Com has announced it'll be offering a service to financial institutions whereby account holders use their cellphone as a "key" to verify their identity and withdraw cash, with the withdrawal limit returning to zero when the transaction is complete. Following a spate of negative publicity about people having their accounts emptied, some banks have already introduced palm-vein authentication using IC-chipped bank cards but NTT Com says that its system will be cheaper, partly because it doesn't require ATMs to be modified. Launch is in the second half of this year.

[Via Mycom PC Web (Japanese)]

Dainippon Printing's IC-chip posters

Dainippon Printing is updating the IC-chip based transmitter they'd developed for use in advertising posters to make it compatible with the FeliCa chips that now have a home in some 5 mn pockets thanks to their inclusion in DoCoMo cellphones. The idea is simple: swiping your phone near the poster gets you access to some kind of more detailed content, special-offer tokens, etc.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

[UPDATE: We were able to finally get our hands on an image of the Denpa Poster, as it's called. Seems a bit small...]

Cellphone fan taxi charging

When we first saw the turbine-like device in the photo to the right we figured we had stumbled across plans to create a fleet of jet-powered taxis and that a pair of retractable wings had to be hidden somewhere about. Unfortunately, on reading the accompanying article it turns out that this is the main part of a wind-powered cellphone charging attachment for taxis that we wrote about on Engadget a while back. Since the company rolling these out, Ecolo 21, boasts a fleet of precisely 20 taxis and will be fitting the wind charger to exactly one for now the environmental impact is set to be, er, limited, but they do plan to roll them out across the fleet in due course.

We'll keep our eyes out for any taxi companies that appear to be going the jet-powered route, of course.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

Cellphone PDF publishing

DoCoMo's iS series are usually an opportunity for it to warm over the current range, introducing some incremental improvements to keep things going until the next model number comes out. The 901iSs follow the trend, though it's interesting to see that FeliCa e-wallet support is now across the range, and that the standard pixel count for cameras is up to 2 megapixels. Another interesting development on the content front is that all handsets include a PDF viewer, and true to DoCoMo's history of getting its software ducks properly in a row for hardware launches, today sees a bunch of content providers announce that they'll be distributing cellphone-friendly PDFs of IPO prospectuses, newspapers, subway maps, and so forth. Game company Hudson is offering a PDF list of all the titles downloadable from its site, with clickable links to take you to the download pages. It's not rocket science, but it does advance the field of cellphone content that can be read offline, which at the moment is mostly confined to taking a snapshot of the text of a webpage for later reading.

[Via NTT DoCoMo: Press Release Article - NTT DoCoMo Develops FOMA 901iS and K-Tai Watch]

Upside-down cellphone pocket system

Slightly old article from K-Tai Watch here that no-one seems to have picked up yet: Tailor Yoshimura have come up with a pocket system that allows you to drop in your cellphone into a breast pocket from above and pull it out from an opening below. This isn't new in the sense that the company's been marketing a formal-wear version for a couple of years now, but the application to casual wear is new (they claim that the pockets are all but invisible on a patterned shirt, though we'll have to call BS on that one judging from the photo to the right). T-shirts start at Y2,900, with casual shirts going for Y5,900 and up. Unfortunately, it looks like all the t-shirts feature an advert for the so-called P4P System that the pocket uses, and all the casual shirts are in questionably-coloured stripey patterns.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

QR codes take to the TV

We've written before about QR codes, the complex barcodes that you can use for storing URLs or text data that are read by the cameras in most Japanese phones. These have found their way into all sorts of print media and websites, and in a logical extension of that Japanese firm Mediastick has now developed a version, the MS-CODE that can be read from a TV screen. The first use was tonight, to send messages to players during a baseball broadcast that unfortunately our fast-paced executive lifestyle didn't permit us to get home to watch. It's something of a surprise that QR codes are making no inroads overseas that we can see as yet given the considerable takeup in Japanese cellphones.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

Motorola's first DoCoMo smartphone passes FCC muster

We had heard a while back that Motorola would be building smartphones for NTT DoCoMo, and it seems sharper eyes than ours have caught the first of these, the FOMA M-1000, making its way through FCC approval. Word is it'll be GSM/GPRS/W-CDMA, have Bluetooth 1.2 and WiFi, include a 1.3 megapixel camera on the back and a 300,000 pixel version on the front for videophoning, and come running Symbian with an Opera browser, MP3 player and doc viewer thrown in. A look at the draft of the user manual also shows that it supports VPN access, lending weight to the idea that this is going to be mainly for corporate use. Let's hope they do something about the visuals for the production version, though--with Motorola's recent success in regaining some cool on the design front, it'd be a pity to see a grey lump like this hit the shelves.

[Via Slashdot Japan (Japanese)]

(crossposted to Engadget)

Penck: au's latest Design Project handset

au, KDDI's cellphone subsidiary, continues to take more chances than most with its handset designs. Latest in the au Design Project series is Makoto Saito's oddly-named Penck (named for artist A.R. Penck), a rounded-off CDMA 1X WIN handset with 3D speakers, a 1.24-megapixel camera, 260,000-colour, 2.2-inch, 240x320-dot LCD screen, and support for song downloads, Flash, and movin' pikchas in the SD-video (.ASF) format. It also may just be the first cellphone you could take to a stone-skipping contest and have any kind of chance at winning.

[Penck minisite @ au.KDDI.com]

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

(crossposted to Engadget)

DoCoMo’s 700i handsets: Starting the big 3G push

The popularity of NTT DoCoMo's 3G FOMA service has been starting to hurt recently--those high-end handsets cost it a lot in subsidies, and with most new subscribers not in the high-roller category, the news for the bottom line is less than rosy. Getting everyone over to 3G while at the same time keeping profits buoyant requires something cheaper and less extravagant on the handset front, so the new 700i series dumbs down the feature set to the “basics”: megapixel cameras, videophone, AAC audio playback (plus iTunes sync for some models), and HTML email with support for 500kb file attachments in all models. Yeah, we thought "basic" meant something different too.

[Read]

(Crossposted to Engadget)

NEC's N901iC handset out Friday

NEC has established a place as the mainstream handset choice for DoCoMo subscribers, which has the unfortunate knock-on of making them monolithically unwilling to change handset designs. Hence, the 901iC's competent but tedious lines are pretty much identical to its N900iS predecessor; enhancements come in the form of FeliCa, DoCoMo's smart-chip payment system, and some videophone tweaks like allowing you to overlay graphics or a message on your picture, and sending a still image in place of your live phiz when you pick up to give you time to fix your hair or deal with anything incriminating in eyeshot. Other features are pretty much as standard for the 901 series: 1-megapixel camera, 3D sound, etc.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

[NTT DoCoMo press release]

KDDI looking to monetize adult content/dating sites?

KDDI has added categories for adult and dating sites to its content menu. While these appear under the "other open sites" category and aren't part of the officially-sanctioned content offerings, au is getting involved both with policing the content (i.e., checking that the sites comply with legal requirements such as mosaicing naughty bits) and in billing -- any membership fees can, it seems, be paid using au's Matomete au Shiharai ("all-in-one au payment") service, which charges site membership fees to your phone bill.

au's explanation is that it was already possible to access adult content via links from other unofficial sites in its directory, and that the move is intended to give it some control over access to adult content (clicking through to the "other open sites" category brings up a warning and a requirement to age-verify using a password) and the content of these sites. We note the responsible approach, but assuming we're drawing the right conclusions above it also means that they will be tapping into a lucrative stream of revenues.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

KDDI's toothsome Sweets phones

All this trying to make cellphones for people who aren't into black, silver and charcoal grey is fine, but the names of the Sanyo Sweets' colour schemes--Cassis Mouse, Vanilla Beans and Mango Pudding--are enough by themselves to give us the screaming abdabs, without even seeing the pinkly orangeness of the real things. Worse, they come with flower-patterned and holographic stickers to enable further decoration. The specs are pretty standard, with the 330,000-pixel CMOS camera in particular looking like a letdown in these days of wall-to-wall megapixels (bizarrely, though, it includes GPS, which KDDI has made its own while DoCoMo and Vodafone continue to feign disinterest). Coming to a Harajuku near you soon.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese) ]

NEC 506iS flat-panel speaker cellphone

NTT is winding down its development of high-spec 2G handsets--the current 506 range may well be the last, and there's a lower-priced 700i range of FOMA phones coming in the spring to give the 3G migration a further boost. However, that hasn't stopped NEC from throwing one innovation at us in the form of their N506iS's flat panel speaker--in other words, a display that also functions as a speaker. This is something that has cropped up in their recent desktop PCs, but it's a first in a cellphone. Other specs are about what we've come to expect--the screen can be rotated 180 degrees and folded flat again, there's a 1.3-megapixel camera, OCR functionality for scanning business cards, and a hookup cable for displaying photos and video clips on a TV.

One use of the display speaker that is not going to take off, however: "The user can hear the person on the other end by placing an ear anywhere on the panel," they say. Pressing our ears against a cold phone screen doesn't sound like it would feel too good, even without the potential ear gunk problems.

[Read: NTT DoCoMo press release]

IM&T's Bluetooth pen

IM&T's Hitachi Maxell-manufactured (and seemingly nameless) Bluetooth pen doesn't represent a great leap forward, based as it is on technology from Swedish firm Anoto that's already turned up in the Nokia Digital Pen, but it does mark the first time one of these has surfaced in Japan. Scribble on a special pad of paper and check off the necessary boxes, and hey presto, your scrawl is beamed to your phone and emailed. Their marketing approach caused a smile or two around here, though; it's aimed at older users with less dexterous thumbs who'd prefer the simplicity of handwriting. Unfortunately, the two or three Bluetooth phones that are available in Japan are high-end models like our Fujitsu F900iT that will intimidate the hell out of anyone who has trouble even typing mail.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

Legal advice by videophone

Seems the latest use thought up for FOMA videophones is remote legal advice. Not necessarily a sign that videophones are becoming more popular (surveys suggest the public is warming up, but we've yet to make more than a couple of video calls), but further evidence of Japan's rabid early adoption, were it needed. A half-hour on the vid with former bosozoku bad boy turned attorney Hiroyuki Kanezaki (pictured right) will cost you Y5,000, payable by credit-card.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

Ban on cellphone use while driving in effect

We've been turning into more of a comment spam repository than a blog recently due to a slew of other commitments that have left us without much time to write, but a return to normal service is in the offing.

For today, a heads-up to any drivers who are in the habit of using their cellphones on the move: As of November 1 Japan has introduced a blanket ban on talking while you drive, unless you're using a handsfree kit (sharp-eyed readers will have noted the sudden proliferation of headsets and the like in recent weeks). There's a Y6,000 penalty that if not paid can result in a fine of Y50,000. The police have taken down 3,645 people in the first 24 hours according to the Sankei Shimbun; quite a respectable little earner.

asahi.com: Hefty fines now in place for 'cellphone' drivers

The Ubiquitous Communicator

Japan’s second attempt this week to prove that the PDA is still with us comes from the Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory, part of the T-Engine Forum that develops the TRON OS. The Ubiquitous Communicator packs in a lot of goodies: RFID reader, fingerprint sensor, Bluetooth, WiFi, 2-megapixel camera on the back and another 300,000-pixel unit on the front for videophone calls, mic and speaker for VoIP calls, and so forth. There’s a catch, as you might expect; the first production run models will cost something above Y300,000 ($2,700), though the second run should see that come down to about the same price as a high-end digital camera, which should help the quest for, er, ubiquity.

[Via ITmedia (Japanese)]

Japan bans cellphone use while driving; IOData is ready

We saw this Bluetooth headset + adaptor for non-Bluetooth cellphones and were left rather unmoved , especially given the Y30,000 ($275) pricetag. Wireless Watch Japan puts a pertinent spin on the news by reminding us of the fact that Japan is banning cellphone use while driving as of November 1, suggesting that we could be seeing a lot more in this vein before long. With pricing this steep, though, we'd have thought the usual cable type of earphone mike is likely to outsell the Bluetooth variety. Not much hope for makers of the usual kind of Bluetooth headset, either, as there are only about two Japanese phones that have Bluetooth as yet.

[Wireless Watch JapanProduct page (Japanese)]

[Via Wireless Watch Japan]

Motorola's smartphone for Japan

Well, we knew Nokia was angling for a return to the Japanese market, and now Motorola is getting in on the act too. They've inked an agreement with NTT DoCoMo to provide a dual FOMA/GSM/GPRS phone targeted at corporate users that should be out in spring next year. It'll be PDA-sized and (so the speculation goes) powered by either Symbian or Linux, and will include Bluetooth and wireless LAN (probably 802.11b, as it will be usable with DoCoMo's public hotspot network). It will also be able to connect via an ISP and browse regular websites, where current DoCoMo handsets are tied to i-mode and sites developed for phones. Pricing will be at a premium to the Y30,000 or so that most 3G FOMA phones go for. They also describe it as the first FOMA phone to be usable outside Japan, which is odd given recent news about NEC's imminent-looking N900iG worldphone.

[NTT DoCoMo press release]

[Crossposted to Engadget]

Testing DoCoMo's microscopic premini phone

Nikkei BP has up a review of DoCoMo's premini, aka the Sony Ericsson SO213, which with a footprint significantly smaller than a standard business card is very possibly the world's smallest cellphone. Surprisingly, the physical interface doesn't suffer from the pint-sized form factor as much as you'd expect, and if you have small hands it's possible to punch in mail messages at pretty much the same speed as a normal cellphone. The upshot, they say, is that you're likely to find it hard to go back to your bigger cellphone once you get used to this one. If you're outside Japan, unfortunately, all you can do is make up your own cutout version of it and pretend to talk into that. Or we may have just hit on an idea for the ultimate Bluetooth mod--turn a premini into a Bluetooth headset with number display. Go on, we know you can do it.

[Crossposted to Engadget]

[Nikkei BP (Japanese)]

Nagoya shuts down subway cellphone usage

When we first saw an article saying that the city of Nagoya was shutting down cellphone base stations on its subway platforms we assumed that paranoia about phone-activated terrorist bombs had spread to Japan too. However, it turns out that the paranoia is about pacemakers being interfered with by cellphones, which the Ministry of Health reckons is a problem if the two get within 22 cm of one another. Given how crowded Japan�s trains get (the old chestnut is that half the carriage breathes in while the other half breathes out), that�s liable to happen pretty often, though admittedly we�ve yet to hear of someone keeling over after being zapped by a cellphone.

[Crossposted to Engadget]

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

Vodafone Japan's tasteful TV phone

Sharp, what were you thinking of? You come up with a phone that has a TV and radio tuner built in, a megapixel camera, a cool swivel screen so you can watch TV with the phone folded up, and all the usual stuff we expect from Japanese cellphones. And then what do you go and do? You offer it in Prism Beige, Frozen Pink, and Sherbet Blue. We have one word for you, and that word is: Sheesh. [Warning�PDF ahoy]

[Vodafone product announcement]

A fingertap away

NTT DoCoMo may have succeeded in coming up with a wacky interface that we actually want. Their UbiButton controller is a watch-type device with a chip on the back in contact with your skin; tap your fingertips together lightly and it picks up the shock. By tapping out different patterns (it detects only the shock, not the strength) the idea is that you could turn lights and appliances on and off, for example. The fingertip-sized UbiChip that forms the guts of the device can be put into pretty much anything provided it's in contact with your skin--so you could turn on a Bluetooth headset by tapping your earlobe rather than fumbling for a button, or tweak the volume of your cellphone by tapping your face. Sounds silly, sure, but it's not enough to get people laughing and pointing at you (unless that's the kind of face you have already). We'd love a wristwatch remote that controlled everything in the room, personally, rather than the stack of black obelisks we have at the moment. That said, remembering all the riffs to tap out for the commands could get tough beyond a certain point.

[Crossposted to Engadget]

[Via ITmedia (Japanese)]

DoCoMo's WiFi cellphone announced

DoCoMo has announced the much-rumoured N900iL, its first attempt at a cellphone with wireless LAN included. It's aimed firmly at the corporate user, and shaves off a few functions common to the rest of the 900i series (large-sized Java apps, videophone avatars, infra-red remote control). However, it adds a browser that can be used either over WiFi or the packet network, a "presence" function to indicate whether a person you've registered is around or not (this only works with DoCoMo's Passage Duple service, which adds internal servers to handle this sort of thing, and doubles the number of your passages), and an instant messenger.

The specs: 2.2-inch QVGA screen, 1-megapixel outside and 100,000-pixel inside cameras, miniSD card slot. Weighs 120g. Standby time is 280 hours when stationary or 230 hours on the move in cellphone mode, 230 hours in WLAN mode, and 150 hours in dual mode. Talk time is 140 minutes in cellphone mode, 160 in IP phone mode, and 80 minutes in videophone mode. We're impressed with the battery life compared to other wireless LAN phones that have appeared so far, which have been luck to reach the 50-hour mark for standby time. Comes in one colour: silver. Because silver is the colour of the future.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

DoCoMo prepares to roam

DoCoMo's Takeshi Natsuno already indicated in a recent interview that global roaming for its 3G FOMA service is on the cards for late this year, and now DoCoMo and Renesas have announced they're to develop a low-power consumption chip that incorporates both W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS. The aim is apparently to lower the cost of DoCoMo's FOMA handsets and boost standby time. They also list "increasing the popularity" of the handsets as an aim, which we suppose is a roundabout way of saying that international compatibility should hook a few extra customers (though we we doubt global roaming is all that high on most people's wish list when they’re phone shopping). Maybe DoCoMo's evil plan is to have its posse of manufacturers ship loads of cool Japanese dual-mode handsets overseas and then use the installed base to persuade vacillating 2G carriers that they can't not roll out W-CDMA, but who can say. Manufacturers should be pleased if they don't have to develop entirely different phones for different markets, though.

[Update: Nikkei Electronics Asia has an article that specifically states the aim of the chip as "promoting the global use of FOMA services"; again, an ambiguous phrase, but it sounds like DoCoMo is once again preparing to get global on your ass.]

[Update2: Turns out DoCoMo's doing the same with Texas Instruments, too (K-Tai Watch). Looks like they may be going for the tactic of establishing W-CDMA superiority through cool handsets, which is after all what they're best at]

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

[Crossposted to Engadget]

KDDI's spacephone

Latest phones from Japan�s KDDI have hit the wires. Kyocera�s W21K may come in a colour called Amazing Blue, and Sony Ericsson�s W21S has stereo speakers and GPS�but king of the hill is definitely Sanyo�s W21SA. It has the rotatable screen which is fast becoming de rigeur in Japan, plus a 2-megapixel camera (which can reference the internal dictionary via character recognition, and shoots QVGA video at up to 384kbps), FM radio, TV output, GPS, and the ability to act as a voice recorder or USB mass storage device. It also looks like some kind of pod from either Space: 1999 or 2001, we�re having trouble deciding which.

[Crossposted to Engadget (I'll be noting this from now on; we found a site yesterday that has been stealing our content, and I feel the need to note that anything here or on Engadget that's the same is kosher; anything elsewhere is not)]

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

A week with the Fujitsu F900iT

A hint for prospective buyers of Fujitsu's F900iT: Don't think of it as a phone. It's not immense, but it's probably the biggest handset available in Japan today, and if you want people to understand, to share in your parental joy, then it's best to twist the screen around 180 degrees, fold it flat, and play up its PDA-ness, and divert attention from the fact that it would cause heavy bruising if thrown at someone.

This size reflects the amount of stuff that's built in, though: