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Radio Waves Declared Safe

Japan’s mobile phone operators, NTT DoCoMo, Inc., KDDI Corporation and SoftBank Mobile Corporation have confirmed that radio frequency energy from mobile phone base stations does not cause damage to human cells in vitro studies. Since November 2002, the companies have been collaborating to examine the effects of radio waves. As part of the collaboration, large-scale experiments have been conducted on the cellular and genetic level using radio waves up to 10 times stronger than the limit set forth in radio frequency radiation protection guidelines for base stations. In an interim report on April 26, 2005, the companies announced they had found no effects on cell proliferation, gene expression profile, or DNA single-strand breaks. Now they have found there are no genetic alterations or protein functions that could be associated with cell transformation or programmed cell death (apoptosis).

Psycho-Analyse Your Mobile Messages

Have you ever received a message on your phone from someone special but weren’t sure whether the text represented their true feelings? It’s this kind of problem that Animo is trying to solve with its new i-mode service Email Truth Checker which is similar to the Feel*Mail handset function I posted on yesterday. To use the service, you choose your gender and the relationship between you and the person whose message you want to analyse (you can chose from partner, crush, superior, family etc.). After you’ve uploaded the message in question, the system analyses the language used and rates the authenticity of the feelings expressed.

Common Platform for Mobile Security

A coalition of government, industry and research organizations in Japan has proposed the adoption of a common platform based on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) authentication for higher security on mobile-phone networks, bypassing ID- and password-based security. The group announced that it has developed the technology with the aim of providing a common platform for secure mobile-phone communications in Japan. The group comprises the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), the mobile IT Forum (mITF), Hitachi, NTT Docomo, KDDI R&D Laboratories and NEC. Hitachi, Docomo, KDDI and NEC have been working for three years to develop the mobile-security technology, funded with about $5 million from NICT.

OKI Unveils Base Advanced Band LSI

Oki Electric has announced their ML7257 [.jpg here] base band LSI which incorporates voice and data communication functions in a single chip. OKI succeeded in including the three types of modulation and demodulation functions defined by W-OAM, as well as all the voice compression functions in a single device. Thus, power consumption is reduced to two-thirds that of conventional DSP-based software solutions. For the CPU core, the LSI uses ARM7TDMI, which is used in many mobile phones and PDAs around the world because of its high-performance, low power consumption and high-code efficiency.

Mitsubishi Announces Developer Contest

DoCoMo’s recent introduction of new handsets included the D800iDS from Mitsubishi with an innovative dual touchscreen design. The handset manufacturer has just announced a competition for developers to create new applications for the device with prizes of LCD TVs and DVD recorders on offer. Mitsubishi will provide 30 selected entrants with a software simulator for the D800iDS until its launch and a loan handset once it goes on sale in February.

KDDI Unveils 10 New 3G Cellphones for Spring 2007

KDDI Unveils 10 New 3G Cellphones for Spring 2007 by Mobikyo KK

KDDI announced their spring 2007 handset line-up this week with ten new 3G models focused on form and function. The latest addition to their Au Design Project, the Media Skin concept by Tokujin Yoshioka, was introduced along with this announcement that it will go on display with earlier offerings – the Infobar, Talby and Neon – at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The other models on deck are coming from Toshiba (W51T and W52T), Casio (W51CA), Sanyo (W51SA), Kyocera (W51K), Hitachi (W51H), Sony Ericsson (W51S), the second-ever model from Sharp (W51SH) – a popular design originally introduced by Vodafone in spring 2006 (and also recently available from DoCoMo) – plus a first-time offer by top-tier maker Panasonic (W51P).

The W52T, a candybar slider with a wide VGA 480×800 resolution 3-inch screen, a 3.2-megapixel camera and 1GB of on-board memory [.jpg image] stood out as quite impressive during our quick test drive. An immediate and interesting observation is that eight of the ten handsets are 1 Seg digital-TV enabled, which should clearly signal (pardon the pun) that KDDI is bullish on broadcast TV content and services. Otherwise, most have the FeliCa mobile wallet function and the usual goodies such as GPS, PC Site Viewer, Hello Messenger and – of course – all units are running on BREW and come with the EZ suite of mobile content (books, games, auctions etc.) and are LISMO music ready.

The carriers and handset makers are pumping full blast with mobile number portability pushing everyone to improve and deliver better product offering. DoCoMo also announced ten new phones this week while SoftBank is expected to introduce their line-up soon as well. March is traditionally the busiest handset replacement month of the year in Japan, as the new academic and fiscal year begins April 1st; we’ll be looking forward to the official TCA subscriber results.

KDDI Unveils 10 New 3G Cellphones for Spring 2007 by Mobikyo KK