Hasta La Gadget!

In 2003~04, mobile carrier NTT Docomo released a series of “Vision 2010″ videos designed to show the world what the digital future would look like in less than a decade. Japan’s mobile ecosystem is surely the world’s most dynamic, but it’s interesting to see how lofty Docomo’s goals were. While other carriers have different focuses on their brands (Softbank on price, and AU on design), Docomo has long been a leader in future technology such as mobile payment.

Sure, we’re not doing full holographic mobile medical diagnosis in our automated robot cars (and our kids don’t look like Dr. Spock), but there’s still quite a lot that’s happened in the last seven years in the global mobile industry that can be seen in these videos.

Was Docomo too bold in these predictions? After all, 6~7 years isn’t much to accomplish such lofty mobile goals, but it’s a perfect demonstration of how Japanese companies aren’t just looking for the obvious answers.

A great example is the AT&T “You will” ads from 1993 that “predicted” with pretty good accuracy what our digital future will look like. Of course, they were completely wrong about who would actually be bringing the technology, and it’s also notable that even in 1993 they had their video-calling mother using a phone booth!

The Docomo videos are also filled with people doing video calls from all around the world. This is an interesting case study, because the technology and infrastructure to support these calls has been around for several years, and many Japanese are already carrying handsets with forward-facing cameras. However, it’s lack of consumer demand that has put off our video calling future. Even if the video calling function were paid for from the “all you can eat” data plans most Japanese have (rather than as an extra charge as it is now), we’re skeptical that it would get much use in the current environment.

Below you can find Docomo’s latest video (released in 2008), “The Road to Hokusai’s Waterfall“. Let’s come back to this one in ten years and see where we stand.

Thanks to Stephan Kinsella for the tip

We just got out of Dell‘s mobile roundtable, and despite an extended tangent on China’s phone market, we did manage to get some details on its AT&T-bound Mini 3 and yet-to-be-officially titled “Streak” tablet. Let’s get down to brass tacks here: the Mini 3’s been customized with ActiveSync for our own (corporate) email systems. There is Android market, but for future reference, that’s always going to be up to the carrier. As for naming the 5-inch tablet that’s so far been rumored / codenamed the Streak, the company “might as well call it a Mini” said Dell, perhaps jokingly — Mini 5, anyone? During a quick hands-on we got to check out the keyboard, which was very nice and included a numpad on the right in landscape mode (pictured). We also witnessed someone checking out the system details, and sure enough, this custom skin is running Android 1.6 — no telling if that’s what it’ll ship with, though. There’s also a front-facing camera on the Streak, and much to our delight, capacitive multitouch is alive and well on both devices mentioned here.

As for method of distribution, the company will sell phones via Dell’s online store (in addition to the carrier stores), but whether or not they’ll be unlocked is something the company will “most certainly experiment with that at some point, but that’s not [its] first priority today.”

Update: We’ve got some quick-and-dirty video of the customized Android UI and awesome keyboard — it’s after the break.

Continue reading Dell divulges Mini 3 details, tablet (Mini 5?) caught running Android 1.6 (update: video!)

Dell divulges Mini 3 details, tablet (Mini 5?) caught running Android 1.6 (update: video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows Mobile users are facing an unexpected New Year’s surprise. A software bug has struck smartphones running the Microsoft operating system so all messages received starting January 1 are dated 2016.

Phones running versions 6.1 or 6.5 of Windows Mobile are reportedly affected. Microsoft and the handset makers haven’t responded yet with a fix for the bug. We are still waiting for a comment from the company.

The Windows Mobile bug is similar to the once-feared Y2K problem where computer programs had to be rewritten to ensure they interpreted the “00″ date tag as year 2000, instead of 1900. Windows Mobile had 11 percent share of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2008. But it has been losing ground to competitors such as Apple with the iPhone OS and the Google-designed Android operating system. In the fourth quarter, Windows Mobile’s market share declined to 7.9 percent.

The latest Win Mobile bug is an annoyance to its users. Because messages are incorrectly dated, they get lost in the inbox and conversation threads don’t show up appropriately. Outgoing messages, though, are dated correctly.

There is a temporary solution. An unofficial patch tries to use the phone’s clock rather than the one used by the SMS gateway to date the  messages correctly.  Meanwhile, users of Windows Mobile based smartphones on T-Mobile’s network say they haven’t faced the problem.

See Also:

• How Microsoft Blew It With Windows Mobile
• Windows Mobile 7 Delayed Until Late 2010
• Verizon Drafts Developers Into Mobile Software War on Apple
• BTW: Microsoft See Windows Mobile Sales up 50% This and Next Year

Photo: (Tim Dorr/Flickr)

The Mobile Tech Weblog: Swype has announced a new text prediction technology for touch phones in which users simply roll their fingers along the letters of a word on the software QWERTY keyboard of a touch screen phone.

So in other words (no pun intended) a user simply slides their finger over the onscreen keyboard in succession and then when they lift their finger, the program places all of the possible word suggestions within the text box. It is both finger and stylus friendly and the company claims adept users can reach typing speeds of 30 words-per-minute using the software.

Swype Hopes to Obsolete Mobile Typing [The Mobile Tech Weblog]

We love reporting on collaborations on Japan Trends and here’s yet another one — a whole phone created especially for Samantha Thavasa fans called the N-01B.

On release from December, this sleek piece of gadgetry comes in a pink design and is a DoCoMo phone made by NEC. The concept for the campaign is “Handsome Princess” (clearly not a masculine adjective for the Jinglish-loving corporate copywriters). The phone’s camera is meant to bring out beautiful skin and other features include special wallpapers, animations, a heart-shaped speaker and illuminating parts.

Samantha Thavasa is a hugely popular domestic accessories brand (don’t let the western name fool you) aimed at young women that has been hawked by some of the most famous international celebrities, from Paris Hilton to Victoria Beckham to Penelope Cruz.

This mobile release is part of the STNY sub-brand, which also includes leather and canvas bags, and also the “Handsome Princess Necklace”, only available online. Samantha Thavasa previously teamed up with DoCoMo for the STNY Pink Diamond, and this is in fact their third collaboration with NEC.

We previously blogged about DoCoMo fashion tie-ups but this is on a different level. Here a phone maker is collaborating with a fashion brand for a whole product intended for an essentially niche market (fans of this one specific brand, albeit a major one). Given how quiet the Louis Vuitton mobile developments have been of late, Samantha Thavasa is setting an intriguing precedent here with its phones.