DoCoMo QR-Code How-To

You don't even need to know Japanese to understand the commercial. Nice.

DoCoMotion

Played with a few of these today at work. No interesting motion-capable apps come preinstalled though (that was my main reason to play with it :(). I'll have to download some I guess. The press release shows a full list of features, so check it out.

Japanese Phones Slimming Down

Since Softbank took over Vodafone, they have been promoting the image that they are a "slim phone" carrier. Slim keitai like the 706P, 705SC, 706SC, 707SC and 709SC (damn, Samsung makes a lot of phones) have been heavily marketed to enforce this. For a couple months it looked like Softbank was where to go for unobtrusive mobiles. Now DoCoMo has entered the slim keitai market with a vengeance. The 703iμ series, at 11.4mm for the Panasonic and NEC versions, and only 9.9mm for the Mitsubishi version, trump Softbank's thinnest 707SC at 11.9mm.

Sure they are not loaded with all the features, but they have the essentials (scheduler, phone book, somewhat decent 1.3MP camera) and the P and N models have music players can use microSD to expand their memory. I still like the Softbank 709SC I am using, but will be trying these out over the next few weeks.

By the way, the D800iDS was not all that. Cool idea, but the interface is a little slow and there is not much innovative use of the touchscreen outside of click-wheel-style menu scrolling.

DoCoMo Pake-Hodai!

This is the first all-you-can-eat plan I have seen in Japan that includes data traffic via the "full browser" you can use to view PC sites. I didn't see any indication if it covers the use of your keitai as a modem or if you can get the plan for a data card, but I doubt it (!_!). Would be great if that was the case, since 6,000 yen would be a great deal. There is also a "Biz-Hodai" plan for non-FOMA PDA phones. If you read Japanese you can get more info here.

DoCoMo D800iDS GUI in action

Ok, so I'm happy to post videos to my blog. While I'm on the topic of interesting interfaces, someone posted a nice vid of composing a Japanese email on the DoCoMo D800iDS. Anyone who has to enter Japanese text on a keitai will appreciate the benefits of the dynamic GUI.

DoCoMo D800iDS - Direct and Smooth

With all the hype about the iPhone and a delayed release in Japan I was counting the days before I saw some of it rub off here in Japan. I didn't have to count too many days, since the D800iDS was announced by DoCoMo.

There have been a few other handsets with completely virtual stylus-free UI's in Japan. I recently worked with a guy that had an old mono-lcd KDDI handset with no mechanical controls except a manner-mode button on the side. I was especially interested in the D800iDS because I have come to love the design of the Mitsubishi 900i series. Slim sliders with huge screens and lots of extra features. KDDI seems to think it's pretty cool, too. Two AU handsets by Toshiba (W52t) and Sanyo (W51SA) coming out this spring look quite similar to it.

Anyway, the D800iDS looks pretty cool, if not a little prototypish. I wonder if it is just a coincidence that it came out on the iPhone's heels. Probably not. At first I thought the DS stood for "Dual Screen", but apparently it stands for "Direct and Smooth". The keypad area is a touch screen where contextual menus are displayed. Keypad and phone menu icons are displayed depending on what application you are using. There is a drawing program and handwriting recognition (similar to that found on the AU W42SA). There is also "Two-Touch" kana entry, as the contextual keys change when you select a kana to enter. This would be cool, since entering "se" (せ) for example takes at least 3 or 4 key presses.

I should be receiving one of these at work soon, so maybe I'll have more to say about it later.