Over the summer, we covered the "FeliCa" contactless IC system in four different volumes. Here's Part o­ne [1], Part Two [2], Part Three [3] and Part Four [4] if you missed them.

Anyway, FeliCa functionality was previously limited to a few select NTT DoCoMo handsets. This will no longer be the case soon enough. Vodafone has announced they too will be releasing some handsets with FeliCa functionality. Below is the English press release:

http://www.vodafone.jp/english/release/2005/050224e.pdf [5]