[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amVqnCw55n4[/youtube]
This week’s CEATEC show in Tokyo showed that, while the Japanese mobile handset market may be in a slump, it is still the world’s most innovative.
Drawing the biggest crowds was the ‘Separate Keitai’ prototype developed by Fujitsu for the DoCoMo network. The phone detachs into parts – which talk to each other via Bluetooth – so, for example, you can update your schedule with one part while talking on the other.
There was even a concept model with a screen that wrapped around your wrist – very Star Trek – but the punters weren’t allowed to touch them. The Separates were also being swapped over with alarming frequency to recharge the batteries.
The AU network (always a bit more down to earth) had lots of incremental technologies, such as a motion sensor that can work out whether you are walking, driving or on a train and a system to broadcast Japan’s Wansegu TV signals in a local area.
To see functions that are certain to appear on mobiles soon, however, you had to walk to the components zone at the other end of CEATEC. One technology displayed at Mitsumi was battery management chips that can tell you exactly how much juice is left: that means an end to the three vague bars in the top left of the screen.
But most exciting were touch screen displays that offer force-feedback (they use the converse piezoelectric electric effect if you’re interested). On show at Hokuriku and SMK, if you press one you get a really satisfying vibration: perfect for a future iPhone, while if Nintendo aren’t considering it for the ultimate replacement to their DS console, they aren’t the technologists that I know them to be.
