505i Launch Event: DoCoMo Finger Scanner Boo-Boo with Fujitsu Celly

During the 505i launch event on Tuesday, Takeshi Natsuno was on stage to demonstrate the F505i’s capabilities - including the fingerprintreader used to authenticate access to the phone’s address book, mail, picture store, and scheduler. When Natsuno applied his finger onto the reader platen glass (located at the bottom of the phone), **nothing happened!** “OK - we’ll try that later,” he added somewhat sheepishly, after waiting for some 30 seconds..

Now to be fair, the phones on demo were all pre-production models and the company said it will still take up to three months to get them ready to hit the market; presumably, any interface flaws will be solved by then. But on the other hand, they wouldn’t have tried to demo the fingerprint reader if they hadn’t thought it was ready for prime time. ;-( Early adopters: be forewarned.