This phone is well built with a solid feel, quite a chunky case and a little stubby aerial.

The screen seems a little small but has a nice sharp definition.

The GUI has a nice modern retro feel for the navigation and features a theme set as the interior of a stylish apartment, quite original.

The controls seems quite slow to respond, however, the finger print reader was really cool.

You set the finger print by sliding your finger down the reader slowly three times in a row. The phone maintains a digital image of your finger print which you can use instead of a keypad number for locking various functions. I was having a great time freaking out my co-workers by totally locking the phone up and going for coffee. It was all good until the third trial when I swiped my finger to unlock the phone and it couldn’t read my print. I got into a mild panic after about 3 minutes of trying until it eventually let me in. Its a fun feature and has masses of ‘cool’ factor but might be a bit overkill for a mobile phone. Perhaps, if DoCoMo get their way and we all use phones as wallets this feature will be a necessity.

OK its rare that I feel the need to comment on how great a product is as I am a bit of a critic and a cynic, so this blog entry is coming as quite a shock to me. You see I have just found out more about the W31CA from Casio which is just out on the AU network here in Japan.

The cell phone just seems to pack it all in: it has a 3.2MPixel camera, funky swivel screen, full internet browser and best of all it can view Word, Excel and PDF files from a PC.

I am definitely going to get my hands on one of these soon and give it a whirl.

Today I saw a prime example of the proliferation of the cell phone into Japanese society.

I was riding the Metro home after work, finishing tonight at 9pm, which is early for me, and as I was being packed into an already overcrowded carriage I saw something that made me want to laugh.

Sitting down in front of me, looking as stern as anything, was a businessman who must have been in his fifties. He had his briefcase up on his lap and was holding his umbrella like a cane and in his hands was his cell phone, this guy obviously meant business.

The intense look on his face couldn’t give it away but the reflection in the mirror did.

He was deeply engrossed, trying to jump his way to safety, in a game of SuperMarioLand.

I’m sure there is no-where else in the world where you would see such a site. I only wish I had the guts and audacity to have taken a photograph of him to post here. Unfortunately I am too polite - I guess that comes from living in Japan too long.

Digging a bit further into this idea I was pointed in the direction of an article on engadget discussing a similar application available from Nokia which connects people over Bluetooth on their cell phones.

The users can setup a home page with some descriptive text and a photo and then let their phone poll other users, displaying their home pages. When the user finds someone interesting they can then send them a message.

The Bluetooth connectivity is limited to a radius of about 30m so it is really only good for localized usage.

Nokia are marketing this as a fun system for clubbing and dating but with the right application of the technology perhaps this could be the first steps towards the all-pervasive system I am envisaging.

I was just reading an interesting article from this blog about an SMS promotion run by Virgin in the UK. It was an interesting concept were people at a festival were sent a word via SMS and had to find someone else at the festival who had received the same word. If two people managed to find each other they could present themselves to Virgin and win a flight each.

Sounds like a great application of social networking through the cell phone, I’m now wondering how this could fit in with real peer-to-peer connectivity. I guess the simple answer would be to provide a similar challenge but on a much larger scale you would be able to win a substantial prize if you found another user, online with the same word or code as you and managed to meet up with that person.

By keeping you online and keeping you looking to find the other user this promotion would be a great way to launch a peer-to-peer networking service or give coverage to other advertising.

It seems that there is a growing trend in the corporate world to get into peer-to-peer technology. Take ‘Skype’ for example, created by the founders of the file sharing program ‘Kazaa’, this software allows you to make long distance phone calls over the internet for next to no cost.

How do you apply the peer-to-peer mentality to cell phone applications ? I’ve been thinking about this and am getting quite excited by the possibilities of peer-to-peer apps on phones. If you merge in Geo-position information then and you could create a useful service that alerts people when someone interesting is in their vicinity.

By creating a profile, users would be able to advertise who they are to the world and receive alerts when someone else who matches their search criteria is in the nearby area. This could lead to interesting networking opportunities for salesmen for instance, or for people who share obscure interests. On a more practical level you could advertise that you are looking for a builder to patch up your roof - the service would alert you when someone with the right qualifications passes you.

The idea of online-directories for finding services is not new, but take it to the next level with real-time, real-world integration and you have the beginnings of a datamap which you can overlay on your everyday life.

Here’s a cool idea, you combine RSS datafeeds with GPS position tags and create a location based browsing experience.

Not too dissimilar from recent ponderings about geo-tagged photos this idea comes with a twist.

Think about how RSS feeds when viewed in your reader give you streams of information from different sources all ordered by time and date, now imagine a portable reader with streams of information sorted by location. It would be so cool, you leave your cell phone switched on and tuned into the application as you walk around town. You check it occasionally to see what people have posted from or about where you currently are.

The information could be mindless junk from surfers with too many gadgets or it could be corporate messages commanding your attention to a sale at a nearby store, the possibilities are huge.

Today one of my collegues showed off a new i-appli that he had found. For anyone who isn’t familiar with the Japanese i-mode network, an i-appli is basically a java appi specifically created for DoCoMo phones.

Anyway, this new i-appli that has got everyone in the office excited is a really good ‘full browser’ called ’scope’ that lets you view real websites through your mobile phone. He showed me it in action and I must say I was impressed. With the 3G FOMA network the images and page content loaded up fast and looked sharp on the small screeen.

This has got me thinking about what this means for services like i-mode ?

Could it be that the in the future content for mobile sites will be no different from real sites? Will i-mode and WAP content become redundant?

Have you ever tried to surf the web from your cell phone? Chances are, if you have, you were probably disappointed by the experience.

At the moment a lot of carriers are still only providing access to a portal of partner sites for their subscribers. The largest and most successful data service, NTT DoCoMo, provides a ‘walled-garden’ portal of content but also allows access to the regular internet. The problem is that most regular sites are not designed for mobile access and are only suitable for the larger screens of PCs, and those that are specifically made for cell phones are hard to find.

Google is trying to break into the cell phone market by offering a mobile version of their search engine that also translates the PC version of a site into a cut-down version for viewing on your handset. The feedback I have been reading so far has been mixed, I personally have not been that impressed by what I have been able to find so far, the translated pages I have been reading just don’t ‘gell’ together well. Having said that I do think this is an excellent idea and with projects like the W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative trying to standardise content so that it is readable by mobile devices as well as PCs we will soon be able to read normal content on the cell phone.

As the carriers increase the capacity and speeds of their networks and as more sites adopt common web standards the next question we have to ask is, will the content of the ‘full sized’ internet be relevant to the mobile user?

The mobile user tends to surf for information when they are out and about and when they are waiting for something, the most common time for the Japanese and Koreans to surf on their cell phone is in the train on the way to and from work. The user is usually looking for quick hits of information or entertainment and the successful sites know this and make it quick and easy to find. The user does not want to be sifting through countless layers of menus, have to click and load too many pages or have to type in or read lots of text. Granted the user will have to click through some links or type something in to find the content they are looking for but good design will mean they can get to the content with the least amount of clicks. The sites that do this are the ones that get bookmarked and being bookmarked from a mobile should be a much coveted thing as the memory space dictates ( for now at least ) that only the best sites get saved.

Getting your site featured on one of the main carriers home portals is the best way you can attract customers to your content but this is a highly competitive area and the service requirements placed on your organisation will block most small companies from access. This leads me to think that there is still space for new, high quality portals in the market and novel ways to link through to content. Maybe some form of context-based click-through portal would be good, where the dynamic links take you to information you have already expressed an interest in, either through previous searches or through filters you set when registering.

The typical user on the train looking for something to distract him or her from the journey is looking for ‘bite-sized’ packets of information, they do not want lengthy discourse on a topic - they carry books for that. So it is vital to tailor your mobile content for this audience.

Content has become more diluted with each phase of its delivery from the first printing presses through television and the internet information has become more widespread and more specialised. From a time when the only book you could read ( if you could afford it ) was the bible through to a time where you could look up the different sub-cultures of algae found in ponds, if you really wanted to.

With the new mobile media still in its infancy some argue that this model will continue, the internet as we know it will remain but with a new method of access, others argue that a totally new model will be needed one that caters for a new audience of short term users.

I personally think that both points of view are valid. The mobile internet will give the specialists even easier access to their topics of interest and at the same time a new style of site will evolve to fulfill the masses who will surf for short term distraction.

However, my money is with the short term users because of the simple fact that the small screen and keyboard really isn’t suited for serious use. I have tried to work using my phone, I have also tried to publish to this blog using my phone and the experience in both cases has been painful

With 12 handsets already on the market and 3 million subscribers NTT DoCoMo’s Felica system has moved the electronic wallet from fantasy into reality, now you can buy goods from over 20,000 stores by just placing your cell phone over the reader. Its that simple. But will it really take off?

The technology is good: the RFID chipset is a proven technology already in use in credit cards in Europe; and the idea is good, managing all your payments from one point without the need to carry cards and cash will bring convenience for the millions of users who already carry their cell phones with them everywhere they go. So it would seem perfect sense to merge all three things into your handset.

However, there are critics who say that the phone will never replace the convenience of slipping out that bit of plastic from your wallet when the bill comes. And that the prestige that comes with owning a platinum card will never be replicated on a cell phone. There are some who say that cash will never die being the perfect way to pay for most day to day items.

Regardless of which is the correct view, there seems to be no reason why there wont be a use for another, easy method of payment. And so for now my money is on the Felica standard winning through, well, at least in Japan.