Over in the News Section, Taro mentioned that au (KDDI) will now be providing English disaster warnings and messages over their EZ mail ( EZ Web ) service.

KDDI’s au phones to accept English disaster-time messages
TOKYO — …disaster-time message transmission services via the au cell phone EZweb email function will accept English messages from July 14….cell phone users to leave messages such as “safe,” “sustained damage,” and “staying at home” or “staying at a shelter” as well as a short comment ….

In this day and age we’re all told to be a little more careful, and a little more alert about our surroundings, and au seem to be taking the right approach. There’s no use for an English speaker to be sent alerts in Japanese, now is there?

KDDI has announced that the upcommiong W32SA by Sanyo, and the W31T by Toshiba will be equipped with their new EZ feature “EZ Memory Pocket”.

Basically, this allows the user to upload their entire address book including phone numbers and details to an AU server, where it is backed up incase of handset loss or malfunction. We all know how frustrating it can be when you lose your phonebook!

According to TechJapan, the menu can be accessed by going “Top Menu” > “Search by EZ Service” > “EZ Memory Pocket”.

EZ-MP’s service will begin at 105 Yen per month. That’s about USD $1.

In the image above, you’ll see the process of uploading. The little sun is saying “Uploaded photos and movies can be shown to everyone! Albums can be created thru Memo Pocket Site, and accessed through PC aswell!”

This certainly will be a handy feature of the EZ handsets, and I’m sure DoCoMo and Vodafone will include something similar but with an “i” or “live!” attatched to it ^^.

Official EZ-MP Website: EZ-MP.jp
Via: TechJapan

Daimaou sums it up very well, and until I go to a shop and see them, I won’t go into further details about the 5 new 3G WIN models introduced this week by au (KDDI). As he says, “of course they all have their own specs, but overall what matters is:
-Tuner TV
-Tuner FM
-3.2 megapixel camera
-Bluetooth (for some)
-Document Viewer (PDF, Word, Excel… for some)
-Web browser (real one. for some)”

(If you want to know more details about the specs and all, please say so in the comments below.)

Via Akihabara News

Electronic/Phone shops in Japan have fake plastic phones on display usually. They look the same as the real phones, they weigh the same, they make the same noise when you open/close them, etc. But they are not the same as the real stuff of course, and often they are just a little bit better. When you are really shopping for something, you can go to one of the larger retailers and ask to see a real functioning charged model, and play with it. Yodobashi and Bic Camera shops usually have a series of all the most recent models available for your enjoyment. Especially now that music is the trend to follow…

So, what does the Penck really look like? Everyone knows it is very cool on paper, but does the real phone live up to the expectations, or does the ad reflect what people really say when they see it for the first time?

After spending a few minutes taking pictures and looking at myself in the plastic imitation of chrome, I have to say I am not really convinced this is the ultimate accessory I need to become the coolest guy on the block. Sad…

First, it is made of plastic, not metal. If there is metal in the shell, it is below a sheet of plastic, and there is not enough of it, obviously. The phone is too light. It feels cheap. It feels plastic, when in fact you expect metal. I understand the advantage of a light phone in a pocket, but when you want to go “chrome”, you need to feel it in your hand. And it doesn’t feel “cold” in the hand like metal would either.

(Scroll down for more…)

The two other models are not finished properly either. “Coffee” was supposed to be matte, while in fact it is very shiny. And “Milk” just looks like your average white plastic phone, when they could have played around and made the iPod look dull. Mmm…

What made me angry were the little openings for the cord and the SD card. They were painted over on the outside, and “cheap-plastic” color on the inside. The finish is definitely not a reflection of this phone’s price tag nor the fuss made around its exterior design.

On the good side are the screen, the interface, the sound. Overall, the inside is good, and the outside not so much. The GUI is very cute and original with its low-tech minimalist big pixel animated icons. Once you open it, you feel like there is something well done in the phone. First impression matters and the Penck has a lot of inner beauty.

So, the specs are good, and AU seem to care about their network (which is important since one phone is locked to a network here), so overall, it is probably a good phone, but the Penck didn’t receive as much attention as it deserved to make it the ultimate object of desire it could have become.

It is no surprise that the campaign for the new AU A1404S features Yuki. This Sony Ericsson phone comes in 3 colors (black, green, and pink) and you can change from one Style-Up® themed panel to another on the cover of the phone.

The slogan “Play!” reflects this constant need for change typical to teenage girls in Japan and elsewhere. And of course, “play” also refers to music, as you can listen to music with this phone. But don’t hope for too much: it is not an MP3 player, but merely an FM radio. Better than nothing?

Yuki could be defined as the “Japanese Björk”, in that she changes her appearance with every single, and that her videos are often very graphical and original (and often very much inspired by those of Björk, actually). Hint to the various covers and styles of the A1404S.

Yuki is very popular in Japan, especially among girls. But that could not be enough to sell the A1404S, so they played the “kawaii! factor” and added a cute rabbit too. The message becomes then “Pimp my phone as often as I pimp my rabbit, so they always match!”, which is just plain strange, but will surely itch a lot of the Shibuya girls out there.

Also, don’t forget DoCoMo’s Lechiffon was released recently with not much in it. It’s being advertised heavily this week in Harajuku Station, and it is certainly the best time for AU to surf the ribbon trend and introduce their own pimped up “kawaii” ketai.

And of course, Yuki -> Music -> A1404S… No need to be a genius to understand the link between a music player and a J-Pop singer.

Specs:
- 0.32 megapixel CMOS camera
- 107 gram
- 48*93*24 mm
- 2.3″ QVGA display (240×320)
- Bilingual

Shibuya station is a nice canevas for big bold advertising. Just before it was replaced with the promo for “The Aviator”, three big posters au’s Penck were up there. No real surprise there, since it is supposed to be the hippest phone nowadays. But what is kinda puzzling is the catch copy they chose to promote their new cool shiny phone.

“What?”
Yes. Exactly…

KDDI has opened an Alpha Pup playland for its mobile universe right in the heart of Tokyo fashion central — Harajuku. Five floors of interactive phones and games, KDDI Designing Studio sits strategically at the mouth of Takeshita Dori at one of the area’s busiest intersections.

At the Ribbon Cutting ceremony on 3 March, we listened to KDDI’s President Tadashi Onodera describing the strategy behind the choice of locations, saying the company has to synch with the needs and wants of its customers and their changing lifestyles: “It is Harajuku that draws the opinion leaders of Japan’s youth culture.” Youth culture is a prime focus for Japan’s top 3G provider. Their Chaku Uta Full music download system and EZ Game Street mobile gaming portal are exactly what the pediatrician ordered for young mobile slackers looking for portable fun. The company hopes a flood of trendy pop princes and princesses will wash through Designing Studio’s sliding glass doors, reaching out for KDDI’s cutting-edge techno fun as they flow on through.

Via: Wireless Watch Japan

After Naoto Fukusawa’s Infobar, the W11K, and Marc Newson’s Talby, au Design project has just released (2/18) another cool phone everybody will want to buy. Designed by Makoto Saito, here is Penck.

It comes with everything you’d expect, 3D speakers, a 1.24-megapixel camera, a 260,000 colour, 2.2 inch, 240 x 320 LCD screen, support for song downloads, Flash, video (.ASF), SD card slot…

The pebble-shaped Penck comes in 3 colors (a shiny metal, a milky white, and a mat coffee brown), measures 57×98x28mm, and weights 134 gram.

Visit this page if you want to see pictures of a few prototypes from au design project and drool… (And here too.)

First thing with this phone, it’s bilingual. The previous 3 are not. If you can’t read Japanese kanjis properly, this is your first choice unfortunately… But it is not really a bad choice because the W22SA is full of nice features too. The camera is a bit weak with its 1.33 megapixel CMOS, but there is a “huge” 40 MB of storage space for your photos. But no miniSD card reader though! And the camera has autofocus and a USB connection too. On the sound side, the usual stereo speakers are here of course, but these are “surround” (Still not sure what it means on a phone though…). Anyway, they are good enough for you to listen to the FM radio included. And last but not least, it comes with a dictionary linked to the camera (but apparently it works the English to Japanese way only). GPS, infrared… A lot of features in a cute, bi-color, light, and small phone.

Main specs:
* weight: 114 gram
* size: 48*99*25 mm (slide)
* main display: 2.2 inch (1.5 inch subdisplay)
* main mobile camera: 1.33 megapixel CCD
* data storage capacity: 40 MB
* Infrared, USB, GPS.

It’s fun to play with the W22H from Hitachi, because it has “slide assist”. This of it as power steering for sliding front panel. Remember the big Nokia that went “shlack!” in the Matrix? This is more fun. Unfortunately, this, and the fact that you can get it in “vintage red” is pretty much everything that stands out in this phone. And also a 1.24 megapixel CCD camera. Well, I am being spoiled because it comes with all the usual buzz and whistle of course, but it would certainly not be my first choice.

Main specs:
* weight: 142 gram
* size: 51*115*27 mm (slide)
* main display: 2.4 inch (no subdisplay)
* main mobile camera: 1.24 megapixel CCD
* data storage capacity: 24 MB
* memory card: miniSD 256 MB