Japanese carrier KDDI au has now followed
Softbank and
NTT DoCoMo in pulling the red velvet cover off its summer 2009 devices, and as always, there are some neat tricks in here. From Toshiba, the Biblio is billed as an e-book reader; granted, it's using an LCD instead of an E-Ink display, but it's a doozy at 3.5 inches at 960 x 480. It features 7GB of user-accessible storage on board for books, and also has a slide-out dynamic keyboard that can display a numeric pad in the portrait orientation or full QWERTY in landscape. Moving on, the Sharp Sportio Water Beat -- as its name suggests -- is a waterproof sports-oriented set with advanced calorie and distance tracking (
a la Nike+), but you're still never too far from your true destiny as a couch potato thanks to the phone's one-seg reception. Next, the Hitachi Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Wooo is the latest in the multimedia-centric
Wooo series, becoming KDDI's first phone capable of 720p video recording at 30fps -- and there's HDMI-out on board for when the time comes to enjoy your footage. Finally, the SH002 is the realization of Sharp's
solar phone concept from earlier this year, delivering one minute of talk time for every 10 minutes of charge time. There are other announcements in the mix here -- eight new phones in total -- but those were the killers of the bunch, and as always, this post is about as close as most North Americans will ever get to them.
[Via
Engadget Japanese]
posted May 24th 2009 11:54PM
First!
GIG GIG GIGGIDY
http://i41.tinypic.com/3344581.jpg
@)ROFL(. That picture is messed up, but hilarious.
giggidy
Ugh, we can't even get some in these features in standalone devices and Japan gets them in their phones. Me go cry now, gdi.
@)ROFL(
That sir, may just be one of the greatest pictures ever.
Damn, you could have gotten half a dozen KDDI posts out of that.
A wasted opportunity, IMHO.
That's brilliant! Split the cool features, one per phone, so customers have buy one for each occasion. "This is my solar phone for camping, my HD phone for birthdays, my waterproof phone for rainy days and my ebook phone for the train."
Thats dumb. Thats what all in one phones are for. dur
@ Jason
It's called sarcasm, dur.
I'm looking to replace my 3 year old G'Zone, so either the new G'Zone or the fitness phone may be on the docket for me. Sure, I'd love an iPhone but they aren't waterproof and the texting is a pain. Plus AU is my preferred carrier - can't get an iPhone from them.
FIRST
Sorry private party.
when did this become engadget mobile?
When Ross Miller & Chris Ziegler decided to tag-team
seeing as how my phone is often in my pocket, i can't imagine that solar-powered phone being too useful. then again, my phone's always in my pocket because it's a samsung sch-a670. i don't think that palm pre'll be in there very much when i snatch it on june 6.
Must...not...take....crappy....English teacher job....Japan....only...pays....30k a year....phones...not...worth...it....Agggjdhfjsdfsldf
/locks himself inside closet, assumes fetal position
y'know, instead of working as an english teacher, you could work as an english tutor for rich, japanese children. those guys make bank.
...go on
"english tutor for rich, japanese children"
Yep, that`s the way to go.
BUT you have to actually be good. You can`t do a half-assed job and expect them to keep paying you. And if you don`t know Japanese enough to explain the fine details of grammar then it`s also pretty much impossible.
/doesn`t get paid 9000 to 12000 yen/hr for nothing. Not to even mention the "escort rich kid abroad all expenses paid" perks... :P
It's like we are still in Stone age.
Its like, my phone existed in Japan 10 years ago but here it's still cool!
Biblio is the greek word for book written in latin alphabet ;)
An ebook with a large solar panel on the back (or ideally a hybrid eink/solar panel display) strikes me as a good idea.
The very low power consumption, the large-ish flat display/form factor and fact that they are designed to be used in well lit environments rather than using a back light would make them an ideal candidate.
It would also negate one of the disadvantages of ebook readers have over traditional books (ie. needing to be charged from a power outlet).
Engadget does like to stir up the Japan-fanboys. However, if they ever bothered to *use* any of these phones they'd find out that features ≠ The Future!
Software, and usability-wise, nearly all future UI explorations are leaning toward touch-screens w/multi-touch and beyond. Japan however, is still stuck in flip-phone triple-tap + 5-way navigator-land! Add in 4 to 6 softkeys, and you're firmly back in the 1990s. They make nice hardware, but that's about where it stops.
But seemingly, all they have to do is slap on a bigger camera and you get all the "Oh man, I'm moving to Japan for a cell phone!" posts.
I'm telling you - I work in Japan, for a company that makes software for nearly *all* Japanese manufacturers, and they are still running around in circles over here trying to find something as usable or advanced as, ahem, you-know-what.
maybe you haven't seen the newest phones that do have everything that you say.
Oh and if you mean flip phone 5 way navigator as in any Samsung (One of the most complicated phone I've ever used) or LG flip..yes you are in the 90's. I dare not say that my Nokia is more usable than any of these phones. Most of the Software is pretty split...there is not one company that makes the OS..unless you count Symbian.
But still there are light years of improvements that still should be done.
I sort of like being able to use my phone without having to LOOK at it to see where I should be touching a smooth screen. I can open my phone, go to my schedule, and schedule something complete with description without ever looking at the phone. I can also email someone without looking until I finish and give it a glance over to check for typos or Kanji mistakes.
I somehow doubt I could pull that off with a touchscreen.
It`s sort of like the difference between touch-typing and, say, clicking a virtual keyboard with your mouse. No matter how cool and interactive you make that virtual keyboard, umm.... I`ll stick with touch-typing, thanks.
You're either a savant, or exaggerating your usage because everyone, *everyone* I see in Japan, on trains, in elevators, waiting in line, and bumping into me on the sidewalk - is looking at their damn phone.
Many popular touch screen phones in the US have haptic feedback, which (if you haven't used it, don't bother commenting) provides a tiny customized vibration, simulating a button press. On many phones this can be accompanied by a clicking noise (or other sound, it's totally customizable) and used on, for example, the Samsung Instinct make for an excellent QWERTY input experience, way faster than triple tap (or in Japan's case, quintuple-tap). I'm not a huge fan of the iPhone's current portrait-style keyboard, but once you use it in landscape mode, using Kotoeri Japanese text input + predictive input is lightyears faster than quintuple-tap.
So, the future is coming, it's just not being created by the Japanese mobile phone industry. Surprise!
wow, finally I found somebody on engadget who actually manages to perceive things in their true colors :) i mean seriously, here in Japan most of the phones beat the rest of the world with their superior hardware, but when it boils down to the kick ass phone, it's not how many megapixel it has, but the ease of usability and simplicity (not necessarily stripping down their features). That's why I prefer the iPhone over the Japanese phones here, no matter how "kakkoii" the newly released phones are, iPhone still tops them... The only thing that I do hate about iPhone is the pricing :))
Japanese phones are sick!!
Who cares. Japanese carriers are probably even stupider than US carriers. Especially AU and Docomo. About $50usd a month will only get you like 4 hours of talk time a month. Plus another $20-$30 for a "packet discount" plan for data. Softbank has a slightly better plan, providing unlimited minutes to other softbank users--but only until 9pm. Evenings are like $0.50 cents per minute. You can get real unlimited talk time only to a few other people who you have added to your "family" list.
Plus, the phones aren't really that great, unless you like playing monster hunter, i guess.