My old cellphone's battery was dying so I needed a new phone. All the 6 month old models were going for 1 cent each but being a geek I had to go for the newest one.

I ended up getting the AU A5403CA by Casio. It's biggest feature is it's one of the first 2 cell phones with a 2 megapixel camera.

It's also got auto−focus which I'm not sure is a good thing. It's better then fixed focus for taking different kinds of images but it's slower than fixed focus. It takes the camera about 2 seconds to focus. You can pre−focus it if you want or as they call it, auto−focus lock. It also has a macro mode.

Well they just keep going and going. It was only like 4 months ago the 505i series came out and now already the 505iS series is out.

If you go to that page the bottons on the right side, the top button of each group of two shows a short simulation. The new features off all 505iS series are:

I was looking on the Docomo site today and I found this wrist watch cell phone. When you want to use it as a phone you snap it off your wrist and use it similar to a normal cell phone. I have a feeling this is more of a proof of concept thing. The announcement is from last March and I had not heard of or seen it and it's PHS which arguably means it's not serious. Still, now you can be Dick Tracy.

I just noticed yesterday from an ad on the train that the Toshiba J-Phone T-10 cell phone has a built in Japanese -> English and English -> Japanese dictionary. How cool is that! It's also bilingual meaning it has English menus so if you are coming to Japan that might be the phone you should get. 😊

A few more things a 505 cell phone can do.

1) All of them have infrared communications. That's not that new. Many phones have had that before. It's used to beam info from one phone to another like your phone number, address, e−mail etc. The new thing about the 505s is that using their net connection you can view an online TV guide, pick the programs you want to record, point your cellphone at your VCR and it will program it for you.

2) You can take pictures with all 505s. All 505s have memory sticks or sd cards to get the pictures off easy. But, they can also beam the images through their infrared beam directly to photo printing machines.

The lastest 505 to come out, the Fujitsu F505i has a thumbprint sensor. They advertise it as a security device. Once you've registered your thumbprint than you can press your finger to it to unlock your phone. Of course in the fine print it says "This function doesn't always work. When it doesn't work you'll have to unlock it the normal way and use your secret code" 😖

My friend Colin just picked up the J-Phone Toshiba T-08. It was the first 240x320 display phone out in Japan. J−Phone was the first company to successfully push taking pictures with your phone in Japan and although AU was the first to push taking movies with your phone I think J−Phone was the first to really be successful with it.

But, this J−Phone T−08 is insane! It's got COMPLETE VIDEO EDITING BUILT IN! Most of the cameras that take movies just take the movie. Once you've taking it you can send it to someone or pull it into your computer but that's about it.

I hadn't noticed this before but the new Sharp SH505i cell phone has OCR built in. If it's fast and accurate that could be pretty cool. Since my cell phone has a camera I use it quite often to record stuff I would normally have to write. For example I'm reading magazine at some cafe, I see an ad for something I want to lookup on the net when I get home, I just take a picture of the URL. It's fast, it costs nothing and I don't have to carry a pad and pen.

I saw that PostPet is now available for cell phones. For those of you that don't know about PostPet read on...

Me and my short attention span. I've had a GPS enabled camera cell phone for a year and I never tried using the "attach GPS info to photo" option.

I was at the TokyoPC User's Group meeting and Mie of TokyoTidbits.com was showing off moblogging including GPS.

As she showed it I thought to myself, hmmm, I wonder if my phone has that feature. I knew it did but at the time I got the phone I really didn't have any interest and so I promptly forgot about it but I looked at the menus and there it was "Attach Position To Photo" (in Japanese of course). So, I gave it a try to see what it would do.