japan

HTC has unveiled its new high-end HTC J Butterfly smartphone aimed at the Japanese market.

The Taiwanese phone maker announced today the arrival of the new handset, which features a 5-inch, 1080p display.

The HTC J Butterfly -- available in red, white, or black -- boasts a 440ppi HD "Super LCD 3" panel, an 8-megapixel rear camera that can cope with 1080p video, 16GB of storage, and 2GB of RAM. The phone operates through Qualcomm's 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon APQ8064 chip and comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and Beats Audio installed.

Within its 140g, 9.… Read more

More than a month after losing one of its patent cases against Samsung in Japan, Apple has filed for an appeal.

Bloomberg reports that Apple has filed the necessary paperwork in the hopes of reversing a Tokyo judge's decision that Samsung's smartphones and tablets do not infringe on Apple's patents.

That decision, issued August 31, came just days after Apple won big over Samsung in its first major U.S. case against the company. The aftermath of that, which has yet to truly shake out, puts Samsung on the hook for $1.05 billion in damages and … Read more

While wheelchair design is advancing, allowing chairs to do things like move sideways and diagonally and follow the person next to them, stairs and curbs remain a formidable hurdle for all but a few models. It's an obstacle, however, that Japanese researchers are looking to overcome.

A team at Chiba Institute of Technology has rolled out a new robotic wheelchair that can climb over steps, ditches, and other roadblocks. The four-wheel-drive, five-axis vehicle maneuvers like a typical wheelchair -- except when it encounters an obstacle. Then it uses its wheels like legs. … Read more

Many people would probably say their handwriting has suffered the more they use computers to communicate. But imagine trying to exercise your rusty penmanship on letters that have not 1 or 2 strokes but 5, 10, 15, or more.

The Japanese often complain that sending e-mails and texts erodes their skills in writing the thousands of kanji, or Chinese characters, they learn in school. Some are maddeningly complex and, if rarely used, easy to forget.

But brush-painting kanji calligraphy is also a centuries-old art form. Keio University engineering professor Seiichiro Katsura has a way to help preserve it with his Motion Copy System robot. … Read more

Even if you have a dashboard display showing what's behind your car when you back up, it's hard to be 100 percent sure you won't hit something. Or someone. That's why researchers at Japan's Keio University are working on a system that makes the back seat invisible, so to speak.

From the driver's perspective, the back of a car, in this case a Prius, is transparent, thus eliminating blind spots that could conceal hazards. The system is called the "see-through Prius" and it's being showcased this month at the 2012 Digital Content Expo in Tokyo. … Read more

Japan has some pretty high-tech trains, but bumpy rides are still common. If you're squashed between dozens of commuters and gripping a strap with one hand while holding reading material in the other, turning the page as the speeding carriage lurches to and fro can be downright dangerous.

That's why NTT DoCoMo has developed a prototype tablet that you can control with your eyes. The "i beam" has a gaze-tracking function that frees your other hand so you can hang on to that subway strap, or, for instance, pull a suitcase around if you're walking through an airport. … Read more

So you've got your cat ears, your cat suit, and everything else you need to transition to another species. What's missing? A thought-controlled robot tail, of course.

From Neurowear, the makers of Necomimi robot cat ears, comes this concept for a mechanical tail that moves according to the user's emotional state. There's a brainwave-reading sensor, also used in Necomimi, that can be hidden under your hat.

As seen in the ridiculous vid below, your tail will wag when you see a bunch of pretty flowers, or an attractive Frisbee player in the park.

And, no doubt, fresh kitty litter. … Read more

Some people in Japan found a way around the endless lines for the iPhone 5. They just broke in and took them early.

Thieves took about 200 devices from three phone retailer stores in Osaka in the early hours before the launch, according to the Wall Street Journal. Seventy-five iPhone 5s were taken from a couple of KDDI "au" brand shops, while 116 were stolen from a Softbank store.

What's pretty impressive is how quickly the thieves were in and out. The WSJ is reporting all devices in the Softbank location were nabbed from a locked back … Read more

A tense territorial dispute with China has triggered cyberattacks, according to Japan-based reports.

Web sites at 19 Japanese banks and universities, among other institutions, have been hit with attacks in the wake of Japan's nationalization of the Senkaku Islands on September 11, according to Kyodo News Agency and other reports.

The Web site of the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry statistics bureau, for example, has come under a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, Kyodo said.

Tohoku University, an elite science and engineering university, has also been targeted, Kyodo said.

It's not clear who's behind the attacks. … Read more