Viewing items with Tag: "ketai"

Mattonabike from ShigaJet found this article which mentions DoCoMo's most recent "look in to the future", via a small video presentation displaying what the near future holds for technology.

Some pretty cool things like GPS built in to glasses and lots of other star-trek-esque gadgets worth having a look at in the video.

Despite not mentioning exactly when this near future is that they are so optimistic about, we have to give them credit as a previous DoCoMo look in to the future video revealed video conferencing on mobile devices, something which was laughed off at the time as unrealistic, which we can find in the majority of Japanese mobile phones these days...

Also, if you have some spare time and are interested:

If you happen to be in Japan, you can arrange a tour to Docomo's R&D Center, in the city of Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture. we haven't been there ourselves but they have an exhibit called WHARF (Wealth, Human Activity and Revolution for the Future) that looks interesting. We guess the name says it all.

Japan's biggest wireless operator, on Monday unveiled a new mobile phone equipped with a motion sensor that lets users play games like the popular Nintendo Wii console.

With DoCoMo's D904i, made by Mitsubishi Electric Corp, users can swing the handset like a tennis racket or wield it like sword to control game play, instead of punching on the keypad.

I fail to see how this will work since you have to be looking at the tiny screen in order to play these games, and 'swinging like a tennis racket' with both my head and hand is not something I want to be doing on the train...



I had a look at the Specification on the DoCoMo Japanese site, and it does look pretty cool though, although 'not quite' Wii-like just yet. But it appears to have other features, like turning the phone on its side and the display will also switch to a widescreen display automatically.

It also shows off some of the motion sensing game capabilities here. Mitsubishi are also introducing a couple of other phones which have games that take advantage of the built-in camera, I guess much like the PS2 eye-toy.

The phones were just announced, and are set to be on sale in May 2007, just a couple of weeks away. I also love this final quote from Yahoo News, absolute quality:

Earlier this year, DoCoMo, which caters to 54 percent of Japan's mobile phone users, introduced a phone that features a touch-sensitive screen and a model that gives off a relaxing scent.

When I first came to Japan 3 years ago, AU was the poor mans choice of phone. The economist who just wants a phone to make phone calls and perhaps send an email or two. How things have changed! AU are fast becoming one of the most popular mobile phone companies in Japan, soon to rival DoCoMo for their top spot i'm sure! AU have recently been pushing their Music capabilities, offering something that the other main contenders SoCoMo and Softbank (old Vodafone), cannot.

However with DoCoMo recently announcing their partnership with Napster, AU are having to push different parts of their product aswell. They are doing so with the "AU Design Project", and the phone designs are really quite impressive! Hopefully we will see some of these in the stores before long (and i might finally be pursuaded to leave DoCoMo!)

Napster Inc. announced yesterday that they had launched a site in Japan in order to rival Apple Computer Inc. and the many music capable mobile phones on the market. Napster joined forces with the huge Japanese company Tower Records to get their foot in the door in Japan, and will be offering music downloads for flat rates of 1980yen ($16.80) a month.

"Japanese consumers are trend setters, and that's especially true in consumer electronics and mobile phones," Duea said. NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's No. 1 mobile operator, offers a phone model that is compatible with the Napster service, he said, and it plans to make more phones that are Napster-compatible."

Read more at Reuters.com