For your next spy mission, consider the F-01A phone from Fujitsu.
It's a sleek-looking phone with some serious, sophisticated technological and rugged credentials. It's submersible--it will still work if dunked in 3 feet of water for up to 30 minutes--and also functions as a fingerprint-scanning device.
Fujitsu phone is waterproof and uses fingerprint-scanning technology.
(Credit: Tech-On)The phone uses AuthenTec's TouchStone technology, which is a fingerprint scanner that is utilized to navigate the device's controls, and TrueFinger, which is security software from AuthenTec, which matches fingerprint patterns. It's the first phone to use the software/hardware combination, according to AuthenTec.
The F-01A also functions as a normal (for Japan, anyway) phone: It's a Symbian-based phone with a 3.5-inch VGA touch-screen. There's a 5.2-megapixel camera, built-in GPS, mobile payment capabilities, and a built-in TV tuner.
It's going to be available from NTT DoCoMo in Japan, though no prices are available yet.
(Via Electronista)
CHIBA, Japan--If the concepts on display at Ceatec are any indication, completely deconstructing the traditional form factor of the mobile phone is one of the next major phases of design and development research.
Fujitsu concept phone
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News)Japan has one of the most robust mobile phone cultures anywhere, and it shows here on the second day of the show. Sharp, Fujitsu, NTT DoCoMo, and KDDI each had intriguing takes on the next form factor for devices used not just for mobile communication, but watching videos, playing games, and performing mobile navigation.
Take the necklace on the right. It alerts the wearer when there's a call or a message incoming. It's made by Fujitsu and, while it isn't an actual product, is indicative of how cell phones are thought of here: not just communication devices, but accessories made to fit neatly and inconspicuously into the daily routine.
Then there were a host of phones whose screens and keyboards pull apart to be used separately. The Fujitsu version shown below uses magnets to connect the two pieces in the desired configuration. NTT DoCoMo was demonstrating a similar concept.
But as far as futuristic, elegant design goes, KDDI was far and away the winner. The wireless company showed off beautiful designs, which are nowhere close to being reality, but show the aspirations it has for the cell phone. The Ply was part of its yearly Design Project. (Here's a picture of last year's version.)
Designed by Hideo Kambara, the Ply imagines the phone as a device with a series of layers. One layer is a pop-up projector, another is a slide-out keyboard, and another is a printer, a game controller, and so on. The ones on display here and shown further down the page are just papercraft renderings.
The Fujitsu phone can be configured in any way and stuck together magnetically.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News)... Read more
This Nissan smart key is also your cell phone.
(Credit: NTT Docomo)In the latest move by convergence, your car keys are about to be swallowed up by your cell phone. The big goal of convergence seems to involve emptying our pockets, not of cash, although that is a side effect, but of things. The fully equipped tech nerd used to carry a cell phone, PDA, MP3 player, and digital camera. Cell phones took over all those functions, so convergence went rummaging through your pockets looking for something else to subsume. And it found your car keys, which, thanks to new smart keys, can easily be converged into the cell phone.
Nissan, Sharp, and Japanese phone company NTT DoCoMo is spearheading this latest effort. Nissan has been offering smart keys in its cars since 2002, and we've become so used to them that we don't bother mentioning it in our reviews any more. Sharp designed a phone that would, we assume, work on NTT DoCoMo's service, and include the functionality of a smart key for a Nissan car.
In practice, you would keep your cell phone in your pocket and approach your Nissan car. Sensors in the car would detect the unique signal from the phone when you got close, and unlock the doors when you touched the door handle. This same signal from the cell phone makes it possible to crank over the engine by pushing the car's start button. Nissan, Sharp, and NTT DoCoMo will show a demonstration of the cell phone/smart key at Ceatec Japan next week.
We assume the next things integrated into cell phones will be pocket change and lint.
(Credit:
Electronista)
Recent products from Japan's NTT DoCoMo continue to reflect that country's aging population, as we saw the other day with a phone created for the elderly or others hard of hearing. Its latest offering is aimed at seniors who might not be able to use a handset at all.
DoCoMo's new video phone device stays connected to NTT's broadband cellular network for health care and emergency situations, according to Electronista. Homebound patients, for example, can contact their doctors and show them their conditions on the device's 7-inch display, which also serves as a touch screen that can be used to dial out. For emergencies, the system comes with a remote that features a large red button that will automatically dial a pre-programmed number.
It could come in handy for anyone who's fallen and can't get up.
(Credit:
NTT DoCoMo)
It's karma: As the ravages of age befall us, products for the elderly that we used to mock suddenly don't seem so funny anymore. (It starts with bifocals.)
Nowhere is that truer than in Japan, where the aging population has become a source of national concern. So it's appropriate that NTT DoCoMo has developed the "Raku-Raku," a mobile phone designed specifically for people with impaired eyesight and hearing. The phone can slow down the words of an incoming call, read text and numbers aloud, and adjust ringtones and volume according to external noise, according to Textually.org.
It even has a pedometer to keep track of our mall walks. We're now officially depressed.
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