Benjamin's long contribution is smooth reading, but I think it's quite biased, and quite a lot of the facts are plain wrong, or badly researched. There are also a lot of statements which are qualitative or questions of taste (e.g. workmanship & quality of the mobile handsets), but where I personally strongly disagree based on many years of testing many different handsets as part of our business, as well as personal use.
To point out a few errors of fact in Benjamin's message:
(a) The 500/1000 Japanese/roman character restriction Benjamin mentions for standard i-mode email is wrong: (1) standard email service has a 250/500 character restriction and the additional restriction that attachments are not forwarded. _However_, there are lots and lots of added value email services which do not have this restriction. So if you need to send/receive longer emails it takes a few seconds (and maybe US$ 1 to 3 extra per month) to send longer emails.
(b) Concerning the Sanyo C405SA handset: DoCoMo's R209i handset has more or less the same characteristics (black/white screen, small size) as Sanyo's C405SA for AU's CDMA service, however it weighs 1 gram more (63 grams instead of 62 grams) and is a little thicker - in exchange the battery life of the R209i is 430 hours against 200 hours for the C405SA.
Could Benjamin's choice have been influenced by the fact that AU/KDDI sells handsets and services to short-time overseas visitors while DoCoMo does not (except for prepaid service)? (DoCoMo requires a residence registration card, which you only obtain if you live more than 3 months in Japan and have the appropriate residence permit and visa - while AU/KDDI does not have this requirement).
(c) Benjamin's article sounds as if all DoCoMo handsets come with bells and whistles, TFT full color screens, JAVA engine, imode etc. Although these are the most popular types, DoCoMo has over 100 different handset varieties, lots of them are "serious" black and white non-imode "business" phones, some with 64k wireless data connections. And: you can obtain any imode phone without imode - all you do is tick the "no imode" box, when you register the phone, then you save the monthly imode subscription.
Best regards,
quick_thinking |
