New phone!

12 Sep

Posted in: Play

After almost 3 years of faithful service I’ve finally retired my blue Vodafone in exchange for a spanking new, knight-rider black Willcom!

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Well, it’s really more PC than phone which sadly also means the “phone” part of it has to some extent been neglected (it takes forever to reply to a short mail, the reputation of my previously world famous high-school girl-like speed replying skils are at stake!). However, with promises of lower calling charges and free e-mailing I simply couldn’t just let a device with such a high Geek Factor pass me by. It’s definitely the first phone I’ve owned to bear this logo:

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I’ve fitted it with a 2gb miniSD card and am using it to play MP3s during the morning commute to work, and I’ve even found music composition software for it too! You can browse the internet with it and it also comes with a stylus and this really neat slide out keyboard, which comes in handy for writing blog entries when on the move:

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| 20:35 | 4 Comments »

4 Responses to “New phone!”

  1. Hjemme

    September 12th, 2006 at 10:58 pm

    New number or the same??????


  2. Thor Asmund

    October 12th, 2006 at 1:37 pm

    Hey, I saw this one last time I went to my Vodafone Softbank store. It looks jawdroppingly awesome but I had a few scruples:

    1) Is it somehow compatible with the Palm phones? Or is this a new proprietary format that nobody will ever make any cool sofwtare for? (It is a Sharp after all!)

    2) Is it 3G – and if it is, why do you say the rates are better? I thought rates didn’t depend on the model rather on what plan you choose.

    3) Free email?! How is that possible? Isn’t everything measured in how many “packets” you send?

    PS: I took my 3G fone to Australia last month and sent two small jpegs back to my blogsite. That cost me.. 2000 yen! OMFG!!!


  3. Thor Asmund

    October 13th, 2006 at 10:05 am

    I learned a bit more since I wrote this. Willcom is the (new) name of DDI-Pocket, Japan’s only surviving PHS provider. PHS is infamous for its poor coverage, but also respected for being the first to introduce flat rate calling and internet access plans.

    Since PHS is limited to Japan, China, Taiwan (ans some obscure African countries) I suppose your Willcom must have a GSM/W-CDMA (3G) card in addition to the W-SIM then, am I right?


  4. Jens

    October 16th, 2006 at 8:21 pm

    Well, it seems you are already answering some of your own questions, but let me just go through them

    1. The basic system is Microsoft’s “Windows CE Pocket PC” and thus has a huge library of compatible software available to it.

    2. As you already seem to have realized Willcom is not associated with Softbank but rather a completely different provider that has fairly low rates compared with what I was paying J-Phone/Vodafone/Softbank. PHS may have a reputation for having bad coverage but as the number of antennas has increased I think this is now more or less a thing of the past and I am happy to say that I am getting a good signal in my apartment where my previous keitai wasn’t getting any at all as well as great sound! I don’t have a GSM card and don’t know if you can install one to make it work overseas although it would be nice if it were possible!

    3. Regarding e-mail/packets: Yes, unless you mail other Willcom users (which is completely free) you DO pay a fee for the packets sent, but it does NOT have the fixed fee of 8 yen (or something like that) per e-mail that my previous pricing plan had (on top of the packet fee).

    The phone is pretty cool to play around with because of the huge range of software available and endless possibilities for customisation/hacking, but I’m still not sure I can recommend it simply because of its clumsy and sluggish e-mailing system (I send a lot of mails so…)

    Hope that helps!



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