@familyguy no, the basics are the same. one thing different is that in japan each career put a button for their web portal filled with quick access to paid contents like news, games, or ringtones. situation is quite similar to that of the iPhone, except that the carriers have full control of phone, from designs to OSs. SIM lock-free phones branded by manufacturer never came out from japanese companies, so actual cont of those devices were long hidden to the public. results here were a series of full-spec phones sold in $1, with subsidizes from career up to about $900. that's why japanese phones always had good specs. no matter how pricey it may be, the career always paid for them.
there's a saying,"neighbor's grass always looks better than yours" or something alike. now, what if you happened to know a $500 "Walkman Phone" can't even sync with SonicStage? or you hear the carrer folks says "oh,yeah. we always ask manufacturers to cut at least one of their killer distinctiveness so whatever comes next look even more attractive." or see a leak like "our smartphone is totally behind the schedule because my boss says "we definitely need our DRM'd music service ported to it...YouTube? why should we care those niche nerds?" ..." I don't think them any better than things like the N95.
Japanese phone carriers are already doing this. and also some of standard cameras. my IXY digital 600 has a fake shutter to make this kind of noise when sound turned off. weird.
Take a $15 webcam, and a $3 microSD, solder it on a $10 PIC kit, place under your shirt or anywhere. who dare use a cellphone to take those spy shots?
@Steve Indeed they play m4as, but as movies w/o picture. It won't show up in built-in music players(sometimes they have more than one). Yes, they have Full browsers, Some even have ACCESS Netfront with FL3.1 support, with another 10$ charge atop your no-tethering flat rate data plan.They have sorta Java apps, which code not compatible between carriers. You can have a have PC-like address for mails, but can't use SMS over carriers. If you want to buy one, the cheapest pricetag should be around $70-100 on contract. $450 is typical for most of them.You can at least make a contract for any of your unlocked phones, but flat-rate plans and mail services for locked devices only, so using your own $500 superstrong-superphone in another carrier is very unlikely the case.
I hope this help you understand why Nokia couldn't make it. Actually I'm a Japanese. I say sorry if you feel my English strange.
@Aaron ... I totally agree with you. no matter how sweet it sounds on catalogues they are all slow dumb featurephones doesn't even play mp3s. and what they f*ck do with those shiny VGA,WVGA,or even Half-XGA displays are only WAP browsings, and carriers charge on full browsers. can anybody here imagine people call iPhone crap because they don't do WAPs?
# I hope sometimes in future i can talk again with my friend about nokia's "next-week-forever" here in Japan...
Softbank's device numbering follows rules like Series(7,8,9,X)-Model(0,1,2,3)-Model(0,1,2,3)-Manufacturer(SHarp,Toshiba,Panasonic,HTc,NoKia...) . 922SH means 9 series(higher-end) model 22, supplied from Sharp. All smartphones are in X series like X02HT. Though has exceptional 705NK named before Vodafone leaves country, so 9 implies Keitai(no native apps). This manner was ruled after NTT docomo's mainstream i-mode numbering, which comes in Manufacturer-Series(7,8,9)-Series(0-9?)-Generation(1-6)-i-Option form, for example P906i,SH903iTV or F884i(Raku-raku-phone IV). Smartphones are numbered Manufacturer-1-Generations-00, such as F1100 or M1000. Manufacturer code may differ in carriers.
no, the basics are the same. one thing different is that in japan each career put a button for their web portal filled with quick access to paid contents like news, games, or ringtones. situation is quite similar to that of the iPhone, except that the carriers have full control of phone, from designs to OSs. SIM lock-free phones branded by manufacturer never came out from japanese companies, so actual cont of those devices were long hidden to the public. results here were a series of full-spec phones sold in $1, with subsidizes from career up to about $900. that's why japanese phones always had good specs. no matter how pricey it may be, the career always paid for them.