J-Phone Has Great 3G; Too Bad About the Handsets

Overall, I’m underwhelmed. Handset quality and clunkiness versus feature mix are widely considered to be major factors in the fizzling of FOMA to date. I think J-Phone will have to market like heck to convince people these are any better than current (great-quality) 2G models, and if DoCoMo launches better 3G models (as they are expected to do very soon), J-Phone could be in trouble.

As PR conferences go, yesterday’s 3G launch announcement event by J-Phone/Vodafone was better than most. With over 100 media types, analysts, and assorted camp followers in the room, it was packed; WWJ video producer Lawrence Cosh-Ishii and I got there a little early after a quick stop at Starbucks, so could grab great spots for note-taking and watching (me) and video recording (Lawrence).

We felt, I think, a little intimidated squeezing in beside all those massive TV betacams from TBS, NHK, et al, but - Dammit! - we’re media too, so we asserted ourselves and were rewarded with some excellent shots of the proceedings (**make sure** you access WWJ next Monday for our full video report).

The main topic was J-Phone/Vodafone’s new “Global Standard” brand (see news item below), and roaming (both in- and out-country) based on using 3GPP standards is obviously the major theme for their 3G.

When president Darryl Green stood up to make his intro remarks and later waved around one of the new NEC handsets and a USIM card, photographers crowded in and just about herded him off the platform (some at the back of the room complained loudly about not being able to see… Larry and I - well-located as we were - smirked and grinned).

Demonstrations included a roaming call from Vodafone HQ in the UK (projected onscreen via a video conference link), receipt of a Japanese-language SMS message from the UK, receipt of a picture mail from the UK, and at one point, CTO John Thompson jumped up and brought his phone to the front to show that he’d just gotten an MMS video mail from Norway (whether this was staged or not, I don’t know, but it looked pretty cool). There was also a 3G video conference call to a manager in southern Japan.

The streaming download demo using what looked to be a Compaq PDA didn’t work. Oh well; as chairman Yoshiro Hayashi said afterwards, “We were worried it wouldn’t all work.” Don’t worry - it mostly did.

All in all, it was a great show, the network is clearly superior, and I left the event thinking, “Wow, cool! These guys are gonna kick DoCoMo butt…” Certainly, the roaming capabilities are impressive, and will go along way to boosting Japan handset makers’ chances in other markets. I’d probably buy a new phone for that alone.

But after messing through the PR kit today and reviewing the handset specs in more detail, I’m a little more skeptical. They could have a real tough slog ahead of them.

For now, there are only three models: NEC, Sanyo, and Nokia. The NEC and Nokia are dualmode, and battery life runs 50-120 hours in W-CDMA mode and over double that in GSM.

The NEC has two CCD cameras, but they’re only for videoconferencing - no still images. Hasn’t picture mail functionality already been proven obligatory? I guess not… But it is bilingual and comes in a cool maroon color.

The English-only Nokia 6650 can’t do videoconferencing (thanks for the fat pipe anyway…) and has a puny 4096-color display. I seem to recall that display quality was an issue with Nokia’s first i-mode handset here as well (it was monochrome at a time when many others were going color), but it can take still pictures and boasts an IrDA port, so maybe you can sync the address book with a PDA. It also won’t be ready until after formal launch on December 20 (you’ll have to wait until end-month).

The Sanyo model is clearly the best of the trio (you can see a short clip of it in our November CEATEC program here). It has a 260,000-color main display and a 65,536-color subdisplay, can do **both** videoconferencing and take still pictures, and can store 2,000 received SMS messages. Wow! But it, too, won’t be ready until end-December and it only comes with Japanese menus.

Overall, I’m underwhelmed. Handset quality and clunkiness versus feature mix are widely considered to be major factors in the fizzling of FOMA to date. I think J-Phone will have to market like heck to convince people these are any better than current (great-quality) 2G models, and if DoCoMo launches better 3G models (as they are expected to do very soon), J-Phone could be in trouble.

But the network has good coverage (for a startup), data and voice fees appear to be cheap (although I haven’t seen any matrix breakdown yet showing real-life fee scenarios), and roaming could be significant (and already appears vastly improved over the anemic roaming offered by competitor KDDI).

Overall, A+ for “effort,” a bare C+ for “handsets,” and no grade assigned for “execution” - only time will tell that.

– Daniel Scuka

Tags: 2g, 3G, Camera, CDMA, DoCoMo, FOMA, i-mode, kddi, nec, Nokia, sanyo, video, Vodafone, w-cdma

Posted: 4 December 2002 | Filed: Carriers, Newsletter | Feedback | Print |