NTT DoCoMo, by far the most successful Japanese wireless internet technology provider for cellphones and PDAs is set to launch its i-Mode service for cellphones in Europe. DoCoMo is also planning to roll out an internet enabled version, of the soon to be released US and European version of the Zaurus PDA.Over 30 million Japanese people use NTT DoCoMo’s i-Mode enabled cellphones to connect to the internet and play online games, seek weather reports or seek the nearest restaurant. For a long time now DoCoMo also provided Japanese Zaurus (released 1999) users with always-online internet access. The Japanese version of Sharp`s Zaurus runs Sharp’s own proprietary OS while the US/European version uses Linux. A common binary identical layer between the two is to be released, therefor Sharp recently promoted Intent/AmigaDE at the ‘Japanese Business Show 2001’ in Tokio. Here is a picture of an internet enabled Japanese Zaurus, taken by Ralph Ewers for the German amiga-news.de website at the ‘Japanese Business Show 2001’.
In Japan 3G services are already available and allows people to talk to eachother on cellphones while seeing smooth videos of eachother. Here is a most interesting video regarding NTT DoCoMo’s vision of how technologies will be integrated into our lifes in the near future:
Real Player Broadcast or Windows Media Broadcast
Click here to view the full scale picture of Warp3D running on a Japanese Zaurus.
Note to Amiga Developers : Top Priority
Write something that will take _screenshots_, all these badly lit photographs are not helping move product
> all these badly lit photographs are not helping move product
It is a little difficult taking good pictures of the Japanese Zaurus, as it has a much weaker backlight as compared to the <a href=”http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=459“>US/European</a&g… version. This device is still rather slick though, especially taking into account that it is a couple of years old already. It is a good multimedia device which also allows you to write emails and browse webpages. One downfall is that all the operating environment on the device is in Japanese. Although the device is several magnitudes slower as compared to the US/European targetted version, a Java game like Warp (Freely included with the AmigaDE player) still runs at full speed also most AmigaDE 2D games available and under development will work without problems on this device.
Intially it is expected that Dutch KPN will release i-Mode onto the Dutch, Belgian and German markets around April of this year.
Re: Screenshots
<a href=”http://ql.programmazione.it/default_frame.asp?id=58&type=news&lang=… are some better looking pictures of the Japanese Zaurus running 2D AmigaDE software. The surroundings was a little darker when these were taken.
As a Dutch citizen I love to see i-Mode introced onto the Dutch market. Mobile phones are very popular here in Holland!
Pieter: Looks like we have the same IP (Planet for KPN`s MxStream). 🙂
For the people who don`t know, KPN is the Netherlands’ most important mobile and fixed telephone service provider as well as an important Internet Service Provider. NTT DoCoMo has a 15% stake in KPN (mother company of E-Plus).