NTT Docomo is about to release their 505 series phones. The way NTT Docomo works is they define a minimum spec that all phones in a particular series must meet. For example the 251 series required a camera. The 502 series required Java. The 505 series requires Macromedia Flash support and a some kind of memory card.

So camera phones have finally made it out in America and I read on arstechnica that camera cellphones are set to outsell digital cameras this year. I'd suspect that's already true here in Japan.

The lastest craziness is this one. The Panasonic P2102V.

It's been just a few months since my last post about what's new in the cell phone world in Japan. It's mostly still all gadgets but here's what's happening.

(*) J−Phone and Toshiba have introducued the J-T08. It's got a "QVGA" display which basically comes down to 320x240 pixel display. That's about 4 times most other cell phones.

(*) NTT has finally embraced cameras and offer about 10 different camera models. In response J−Phone changed their ad campaign from basically "we rock because we have cameras" to "we were first, we have the most camera enabled users"

Want to make it easy to give your cell phone number to someone? Carry this thing called @address. You put your phone number in it and then when you want to give your digits to someone you plug it into their cell phone and *poof* it registers your number in their phone. The make two models. On with a little light attached.

Since I don't live in the states I don't know how much advertising they are doing for this but in case you didn't know, all you people that keep writing me wondering if you can get a phone as cool as the Japanese phones that you can use it America, the answers is finally "YES!". Sprint as recently introduced several phones that include color, cameras, e-mail, games, web-browsing etc.

I picked up a new cell phone last week. The AU Casio A3012CA.

The basic reason is because A.U. has a special for students. 1/2 off their service. That's $16 a month instead of $32. The phone only cost $80 and my current bill at DoCoMo is around $50 a month so it will only take 3 months to be cheaper.

J−Phone, the company that really brought about the camera in cell phone revolution in Japan now has short movie clips.

The pictures didn't take off until about 6 months after they came out when J−Phone produced a great ad campaign called "Sha−mail". Sha = the first half of the word for photograph in Japanese which is Shashin. The short movie clip they are calling "Movie−Sha Mail". Personally I think like the first one, it will not take off until they give it a better name and ad campaign. I think they should call it "Shaga−mail". The ga being the second half of "eiga", the word for movie.

Here's a great article on the new 3G Phones in Japan.

It talks about how it's been more successful than planned so far, what the competitors plans are, etc. For example J−Phone's 3G system is supposed to support the world standard which supposedly means you could use the phone in over 100 coutries implying that NTTs do not.

Not to be outdone, AU/KDDI as released a phone with a camera and voice e−mail. What's the difference between voice e−mail and voice mail? Well, voice mail is where you call somebody, expecting them to answer, they don't so you leave a message. The problem with this method is that you may interrupt your friend. Maybe they don't want to deal with it now or don't have time. In order to use voice mail they would have to tell you to call back and then not answer the phone.

Voice e−mail on the otherhand, gets delivered so the receiving party can listen to it at their leisure. It seems like an obvious idea. All Japanese cell phones already have voice mail built in so adding voice e−mail was just a matter of changing the software.

These phones ship in just a week. NTT is rolling out FOMA. There W−CDMA 3G phone service next week. It's been in test trials since May. If you check out those phones the one on the right has a video camera in the hinge for video conferencing on your phone.

They're also planning on offering video on demand for these things. I suspect in Japan that will quickly mean scary business men watching porn on the trains but I suppose another use will be to watch movie trailers or sports highlights.