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Japanese Cell Phones Offer a Glimpse of the Future
Dynamoo writes "Vodafone K.K. have announced a new range of phones, available exclusively in Japan which easily beat everything else in terms of features. In particular, two phones from Sharp, the V402SH and V602SH between them boast a TV tuner, camera with optical zoom, virtual karaoke machine and dog bark translater (woof woof), according to this review. Perhaps some features are more useful than others, but with a bit of luck we'll see these features in worldwide mobiles sometime in 2005. In the meantime I guess I'll just have to learn to speak dog by myself."
I need a klingon translator. That would be better.
Never Smoke A Banana.
Is this for blind people?
...that I don't want a phone with any of those features. I want a phone that
a) doesn't sound like crap
b) lasts a few days on a charge
c) functions as a bluetooth access point for my PDA/Laptop
d) doesn't cost more than $150
Japanese dogs don't go "woof-woof" they go "wan-wan".
And cats go "nya-nya"
Just thought I'd clear that up before you rushed out to buy one for your non-japanese pets.
Cool!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Man, my dog talks like a sailor. He's all "get me some fucking dogfood, goddamnit" this and "you best be taking me for walk, shithead" that.
"Honestly, who would want to watch TV on a cell phone? "
Somebody who's at a restaraunt waiting to be served. Somebody taking a dump at work. Somebody trying to find out what happened after an Earthquake and all the power's out. Somebody riding the bus. Somebody taking a...
"Derp de derp."
It depends on who you define as 'we'.
:)
You and I, it would appear not. The general, cellphone-buying market? Maybe.
It has seemed to me for a while that cellphones are really trying to be PDAs. But then if you want a device that does everything that a PDA can do..........why not just buy a freakin' PDA? And if you want a portable computer..........why not just buy a freakin' PDA?
I want a cellphone that I can walk around with, and that goes bring bring hello. Cellular. Phone. If I'd wanted a PDA, I'd have bought one.
However, kids and city boy executives with shiny suits, who are, let's face it, the main market sector buying new phones, seem to want the latest, greatest, smartest, flashiest, most function-packed portable computers. And if there's demand for it, then cellphone manufacturers will make it. It's just a shame as far as I'm concerned that I have to buy some bloated device full of functions I'll never use and will chew up battery power at the rate of a small fish-gutting farm.
I know, if I want something that just goes bring bring hello, I could just carry a Soviet brick around with me. Unfortunately the last time I tried my soviet brick on my network it seemed to fall off regularly. That and the fact that my pockets aren't made of high-tensile reinforced nanofibres to carry the extreme weight
I know this is off topic, but if you haven't spent enough time with your dog to know what he/she is thinking, feeling, and expressing without a fscking dog bark translator, then you're probably a crappy 'parent'.
Right now my dog (Jenny) is laying on the chair next to my computer desk with her head propped up on the arm, staring at me with one ear perked straight up. That clearly says "You're supposed to be petting me instead of browsing Slashdot, you moron." Just learn how to speak dog, it's cheaper and more rewarding.
>with a bit of luck we'll see these features in worldwide mobiles sometime in 2005
correction: with a bit of luck, we WON'T be seeing these features in worldwide mobiles EVER.
Whatever happened to the engineering concept of affordance?
Portable phone: The ideal one is really portable and really a phone. Make it small, light, have the battery last forever and never lose calls. I'll buy that one. Keep the dog translator, thanks.
It's your regulatory environment.
While in the USA, multiple different companies went off and developed multiple, incompatible systems (which weren't particularly future-proof), and Telcos even implemented different networks in different parts of the country, the Europeans got together and developed GSM (Global System for Mobile telecommunications), which I'm sure you've heard of by now.
They actually bothered to implement things like inter-network and overseas roaming, and anticipate the need for an upgrade path for future requirements. They also assigned and reserved radio spectrum across Europe, and much of Asia followed suit.
Meanwhile, the USA hadn't reserved the same spectrums, so even when US operators decided that the bigger GSM handset market was a good thing to be involved with, handsets from Europe and Asia still couldn't be used because they had to be modified to work on different frequencies!
It's one case where an unregulated, free and open market has been quite detrimental to consumers, and in fact the whole country.
They actually want to make a regular computer inside the cell phone.. I actually want a cell phone that can be heard everywhere, with a nice battery and perhaps send pictures and such (which can already be done).
I don't even want that much. Was with you until you said pictures. All I want is a phone with a good battery life and a decent address book. I don't mind a few other features (such as a calculator or a few simple games like Tetris to pass the time if I am stuck at the airport) but they had better not murder my battery life or distract me from the main features of the phone.
My Kyocera 2325 suits me quite nicely. The address book is superb (I love the auto-dial feature where it matches letters that I type to the contacts book -- can call my GF by typing in "788" or my boss by typing in "726" -- that's the coolest speed-dial feature I've ever seen -- much nicer then a list of speed-dial numbers that need to be remembered), the SMS interface is sleek enough and it has the calculator mode that I desire. The battery will last about three days even with fairly heavy usage (I am landline free so I make all my calls on the cell) -- what more could you ask for? Sometimes less is better.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
if you want a portable computer..........why not just buy a freakin' PDA?
Because a PDA, while useful, is bulky and an additional gadget to carry around - if your going to carry a PDA, it might as well have an inbuilt phone.
The current crop of "smart phones" are too big, however a few more years of minituarisation and we'll see cheap phones with good battery life and the regular PDA features such as calendar, internet access, decent addressbook, mp3 player, java VM, email client etc. in a form factor around that of today's regular phones.
The tech is not quite ready yet, but I predict that within ten years, nearly everyone will be carrying a tiny phone-come-PDA with an inbuilt camera.
I would give ANYTHING to hack a series of those ala Barbie Liberation Front style. Change the "dog-bark" translator so it returns all kinds of EVIL and RUDE translations, like "Im going to eat your throat out in your sleep" and "Hah I pissed in you shoes" etc etc.
Way back when in early 95 my dad was running Win95 beta or RC , I gained remote access, installed and shared a folder that I then uploaded all kinds of 2001 a space odyssey WAV's to his system and replaced the default sounds. My Dads name was Dave, so it was friggin perfect, instead of the shutdown sound it would go into the "Dave, What are you doing Dave" sequence and so on, about 10 sounds in all.
ANYONE stupid enough to USE a dog bark translator deserves anything I can make it say.
Except that the countries with the most advanced cellphones (Japan and South Korea) are using proprietary and incompatible standards just like the USA did, so your argument doesn't hold up.
I'm not saying standards like GSM are bad, but if this really was a standards issue, wouldn't we all be ooh-ing and aah-ing over Europe's awesome high-tech GSM phones, instead of Japan's awesome high-tech (insert random 2.5G/3G celphone standard here) phones?
If anything, Japan has proven that GSM isn't the best technology for densely populated urban areas.
Woof Woof!
What's that Lassie?
Woof!
Hold on girl let me take out my cell phone!
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny