Up first today is the "M2501 HIGH-SPEED," a Motorola-made FOMA card with support for DoCoMo's new HSDPA services. It'll go for somewhere close to 15,000 yen.

HSDPA offers a sustained download speed of about 3.6Mbps, but you might want to be careful as DoCoMo doesn't offer a fixed-rate data transfer package for PC access. That said, software included with the M2501 will allow you to make voice and video calls, so there's a nice amount of utility present. It should also be useful overseas, since it supports GSM as well -- you can use the data features in 83 different countries, and make voice calls in 145 countries.



Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/31164.html

Press Release:
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/info/news_release/page/20060926a.html

NTT DoCoMo has announced they'll be releasing the "BlackBerry 8707h" to corporate customers on September 26th. The 8707h is a "Global Model" of the BlackBerry 8707, offering support for W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS, so it can be used outside of Japan as well. It seems to be some sort of adaptation of the 8707v available for Vodafone (whoops) in the UK. Specifications include a 320 x 240 color screen, Bluetooth, 64MB of memory.

Specs-wise, the 8707h does not support Japanese. However, the device does support Namimail, a Japanese reading/input solution offered by NTT DoCoMo USA. Namimail can be used on most modern Blackberry devices, even those on carriers in the USA, so this might be one of the first and only times in history that a handset in the states actually has the same capabilities of a handset in Japan.



Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/31076.html

Press Release:
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/info/news_release/page/20060919b.html

NTT DoCoMo held an announcement event today in Japan for their new iAppli games for the 903i series.

These new games take advantage of the enhanced capabilities offered by "Mega iAppli." Mega iAppli vastly expand upon the capabilities of iAppli for DoCoMo's 900i series, by offering 10 times the amount of program space: 1MB. Furthermore, it is now possible to store these Mega iAppli on external memory, where they have no limitation for size -- it would be possible for a company to distribute a 10MB game, for example.

Such changes enable content publishers to create games of much higher quality. Coupled with the polygon rendering capabilities of the new 903i series handsets, these so-called "Mega Games" offer what I guess is the highest quality gaming experience found on any mobile phone in the world. Major content publishers were on hand at the announcement event to show off their new Mega Games. Bandai Networks showed "Mobile Suit Gundam SEED" with full 3D rendering, Bandai Namco Games showed Tekken 2, which featured the same polygon count as the original PlayStation version. Other games include Street Fighter ZERO (Alpha), Biohazard (Resident Evil), Dirge of Cerebus Lost Episode -Final Fantasy VII-, Monster Hunter, Mobile Pawapuro Baseball MEGA, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and so on, all of which take advantage of the enhanced iAppli features.

Both Impress Watch and ITmedia have coverage of the event, with plenty of pictures to go around. Click on the pictures below to be taken to their coverage.

DoCoMo is geared up to release their bone-conduction receiver microphone, the "Sound Leaf," on the 15th. The Sound Leaf plugs into the earphone/mic port of DoCoMo's FOMA handset and uses bone conduction technology to deliver sound. Bone conduction is a technology were sound travels through a person's skull to be delivered to their ear, rather than through the air canal, enabling the Sound Leaf to be used "even in places where a lot of noise makes it difficult to hear." The Sound Leaf officially works only with FOMA handsets.



Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/30996.html

Product Information:
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/info/news_release/page/20060912.html

NTT DoCoMo went ahead and announced their rates for Mobile Number Portability, which is slated to begin on October 24th in Japan. The announcement says that besides the standard charges associated with a new contract, you won't be charged anything if you move your mobile number TO NTT DoCoMo. When moving away from NTT DoCoMo, you'll be charged 2,100 yen. They also announced a campaign where they offer 2,000 DoCoMo Points to those who move to DoCoMo before the end of the year.

Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/30775.html

Press Release:
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/info/notice/page/060829_00.html

Nevermind leaving someone a voicemail; leave them a videomail! NTT DoCoMo is all geared up to expand FOMA's "Answering Machine Service" to add support for the recording of video messages. Messages as long as 3 minutes can be recorded, but hopefully the person hasn't left the country; messages will automatically be deleted after they've been around for 72 hours. As many as 20 messags can be saved.

No less than 68 FOMA handsets (the number that support both FOMA's TV Phone and DTMF) will support the new service.

Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/30790.html

Press Release:
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/info/news_release/page/20060830a.html

Inside you'll find details on NTT DoCoMo's first phone supporting HSDPA, the "N902iX HIGH-SPEED."

We just reported on the N702iS a few days ago. Today, DoCoMo announced that as part of the promotion for this new handset launching on the 25th, "companions" who look like "Motekawa" (perhaps a combination of "moteru" and "kawaii") will be distributing free nail stickers on the 25th, 26th, and 27th. These "companions" will be stationed at Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Sendai, Hiroshima, Kanazawa, and Matsuyama.

Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/30695.html

Product Information:
http://www.n-keitai.com/n702is/

Panasonic is plopping down the "P702iD" for NTT DoCoMo on August 31st. More information on this handset inside.

Things are really in full swing over at NTT DoCoMo, perhaps as they should be. Yet another new handset for the company -- the "Raku Raku Phone III" is the latest in the company's "simple handset" genre.

Slated for release on September 1st of this year, the "FOMA Raku Raku Phone III" (F882iES) is a Fujitsu FOMA handset including large-character iChannels, a one-touch alarm, noise cancelling functionality, brightness sensor, megapixel camera, "Magnifying Mirror" finder display, and several other fetures targetting Japan's aging population.

"One-Touch Alarm" allows a pre-determined number to be called with a voice announcement while at the same time sounding an alarm as loud as 100dB.



Inspired by:
http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/30700.html

Press Release (NTT DoCoMo):
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/info/news_release/page/20060824c.html

Press Release (Fujitsu):
http://pr.fujitsu.com/jp/news/2006/08/24.html