W31CA My dream mobile phone from Japan

OK its rare that I feel the need to comment on how great a product is as I am a bit of a critic and a cynic, so this blog entry is coming as quite a shock to me. You see I have just found out more about the W31CA from Casio which is just out on the AU network here in Japan.

The phone just seems to pack it all in: it has a 3.2MPixel camera, funky swivel screen, full internet browser and best of all it can view Word, Excel and PDF files from a PC.

I am definitely going to get my hands on one of these soon and give it a whirl.

Here is a nice picture of the phone

Live earth cell phone application

About a month and a half ago I went to a small exhibition and seminar called 'mobile land' here in Tokyo as the company I am currently doing work for had a stand and were doing a presentation there.

On the train going there I got chatting ( doing my best in my broken Japanese ) to a guy who used to program apps on the cell phones over here. He showed me the application he had built last and I was quite impressed, it featured a cool dynamic animated globe with calendar and date functions and the animation ran really well on the something-I-can't-remember-exactly-901iC phone.

It wasn't until about 10 minutes ago when I was cruising the internet that I saw the application again. It is the main attraction in the 'live earth' project, a new global environmental awareness drive by AU ( a popular network in Japan ).

Here is the google-translated link to the projects home page

The charitable initiative donates a portion of the money generated by the subscription charges to the service. It is so easy to subscribe to services using your phone and now that they have something worthwhile to download, the spinning earth thing is pretty darn cool, I am sure they will get loads of hits.

This is the first, real charitable drive I have seen aimed solely at the cell phone user I wonder if it will be a success.

D901is Mobile Phone News from Japan

The D901is has a nice gimmick with its retractable keypad, though when I was using it I couldn't help but feel that it would break really easily after a few months of use.

This is a common complaint of mine with the phones on the market in Japan, they seem 'plasticy' and not very well constructed. It might be a personal thing but I like my phones to feel tough.

The slider mechanism is activated by a button and it is pretty cool, that is if you can press the button in one smooth move when pulling the phone from your pocket. You will have to practice this a lot because of the stupid position of the button. Its just not placed where you fingers would naturally land when gripping the phone.

The screen has a nice sharp display and the phone is generally good, however, the buttons are all on the small side ( maybe its because of my large - foreigners fingers ) and the navigation could do with a bit more thought.

Once again I stole this from the old news section of this blog and moved it to here.

Cell phone tracking ..

Here's one for anyone who likes conspiracy theories or is a bit paranoid.. Imagine your cellphone tracking your every action, it can tell when you are asleep ( if you set your phone alarm like me when you go to bed ), it can tell who you called, who's call you dodged and with the GPS services, where you went.

So who gets access to all this information?

Well if the carriers collect it then the government for one will definitely want it and how valuable would this type of information to be to marketers?

It would be priceless.

I stole the basis of this story from wired.

F901iS Mobile phone review from Japan

Seeing that I have turned off the 'news' section of this site I thought this article would be best off moved here..

This phone is well built with a solid feel, quite a chunky case and a little stubby aerial.

The screen seems a little small but has a nice sharp definition.

The GUI has a nice modern retro feel for the navigation and features a theme set as the interior of a stylish apartment, quite original.

The controls seems quite slow to respond, however, the finger print reader was really cool.

You set the finger print by sliding your finger down the reader slowly three times in a row. The phone maintains a digital image of your finger print which you can use instead of a keypad number for locking various functions. I was having a great time freaking out my co-workers by totally locking the phone up and going for coffee. It was all good until the third trial when I swiped my finger to unlock the phone and it couldn't read my print. I got into a mild panic after about 3 minutes of trying until it eventually let me in. Its a fun feature and has masses of 'cool' factor but might be a bit overkill for a mobile phone. Perhaps, if DoCoMo get their way and we all use phones as wallets this feature will be a necessity.