ntt docomo

Gadgets

What Is This Guy Doing?

11:40AM Jesus Diaz | What is Mr. Roboto doing here? Perhaps checking some CEATEC booth girl’s ass? Staring at the suspicious character crawling towards him off camera, the one dressed as a giant pink chicken? No, the answer is much cooler than all that. More »
Phones

NTT DoCoMo Snap-Apart Phone Belongs in Museum of WTF

11:00AM Wilson Rothman | Charlie at Wired’s Gadget Lab finds NTT DoCoMo’s two-piece magnetic phone entertaining, but to me, the reasons it’s supposed to be useful range from frivolous to baffling to just plain dumb.
Phones

DoCoMo DLP Phone Projects TV, Makes Butt Look Big

10:40AM Wilson Rothman | The NTT DoCoMo prototype phone shown in the video above has an embedded DLP projector, presumably using an LED light source in order to project a respectable 20- to 25-in. video image on the wall a few feet away. The downside, as you can hear from the dude asking questions (AOL Switched’s Tom Samiljan if I’m not mistaken) is that the phone is large, or at least small but strapped to a real brick of a projector. I guess we’re supposed to admire the image, and wait for the actual mini-projector technology to catch up. [TechPertPanel - YouTube] More »
Vehicles

Sharp Builds Wireless Electronic Car Keys Into a Phone, Finally

7:30PM John Herrman | In collaboration with Nissan and NTT DOCOMO, a Japanese mobile operator, Sharp has developed what they claim is the first mobile phone that also functions as a keyless entry and ignition device for cars. Rather than building a new system from the ground up, Sharp has simply opted to include Nissan’s existing Intelligent Key technology in a phone. The system will function like any of the many other wireless keyfobs on the market today, authorising the driver to enter, exit and start his or her car without ever poking any keys around. More »
Peripherals

Smart Battery Will Warn You Before Your Mobile Phone Explodes

9:00AM Gizmodo US Edition | A new “intelligent” lithium-ion battery is supposed to prevent explosions and fire accidents by sending constant updates on its own health. Developed by researchers at NTT DoCoMo, the battery uses a 8-bit microcomputer “brain” to monitor its condition and relay the information to the mobile phone user. More »
Robots

Telerobotic Shopper Lets You Hit the Malls Using a Mobile Phone

12:00AM Gizmodo US Edition | Japan, the land of using technology to solve problems we didn’t know we had, has come out with a new robot that will let people shop at malls without ever leaving their home. Robot developer tmsuk revealed a telerobotic shopper that can be controlled using NTT DoCoMo’s mobile phone technology. More »
Phones

NTT DoCoMo Developing Crazy, Eye-controlled Gadget Prototypes

7:20AM Adrian Covert | The AP’s look into the NTT DoCoMo R&D labs shows the Japanese electronics company is working on some really strange stuff, including music players you control with your eyes, and mobile phones that require your fingers for more than just dialing (think Inspector Gadget). More »
Phones

NTT DoCoMo Considering Android Phone

2:29AM Mark Wilson | For Google’s Android platform to succeed, it could use a helping hand from cellphone-crazed Japan. NTT DoCoMo is Japan’s largest wireless provider, and in addition to being a logo on Android’s Open Handset Alliance, the company has started discussions to get the Linux-based platform on some percentage of their phones. Whether or not such discussions imply that DoCoMo will side with Android over competing platforms in the long term is still unknown, but it’s an important play for Android all the same. (Note, this picture is not the DoCoMo phone). [infoworld] More »
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Super 3G to Blast 300Mbps, Making iPhone’s EDGE Look Like Horse and Buggy

1:13AM Seamus Byrne | NTT DoCoMo is about to make the iPhone’s poky EDGE network connectivity look like a horse and buggy, experimenting with a Super 3G wireless network system that could blast data through the air at speeds of 300Mbps. Somebody do the math, but that sounds like it’s about a zillion times faster than the poky 80kbps (or fanboy-tastically optimistic 200kbps real-world maximum) of the shit-slow EDGE network. How in the world are these NTT eggheads doing this? For one thing, the Japanese experimenters are using four multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas at the same time on both the transmission and receiving side. But this is not something people are using to download HD videos to their cellphones today. The company says its development process will probably be complete by 2009. And from the looks of that diagram above, you’ll need some serious paraphernalia on the sending and receiving side to use this tech, deskside units that don’t exactly look like mobile phones. [Unwired View] More »