KDDI -- Engadget Mobile

KDDI posts

Casio Exilim CA003 and CA004 uncloaked in KDDI au's winter lineup

by Ross Miller posted Oct 19th 2009 @ 6:02AM

KDDI au's unleashing its winter lineup, and among them sits Casio's latest cameras phone, the 12.17 megapixel Exilim CA003 and 8 megapixel CA004. The higher-tier former boasts a 28mm wide angle lens with 3x optical zoom and autofocus, and a 3.3-inch WVGA OLED screen. It'll also shoot a quick burst of 20 pics per second when you need to capture the exact moment and aren't exactly sure when that is. Other amenities include microSDHC card slot, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FM radio, and a handful of color options. Not wanting all that horsepower? The CA004 has smaller resolution shots, support up to 2GB microSD, and a 3.1-inch WVGA OLED screen, but is otherwise touting the same features. Akihabara News has some hands-on shots of the beaut you might wanna check out, unless you're the type who gets violently jealous by phones that aren't hitting American soil.

[Via Engadget Japan]

Read - KDDI au lineup
Read - CA003 / CA004 hands-on

iida Ply and Prismoid phones strut their stuff at CEATEC (video)

by Darren Murph posted Oct 7th 2009 @ 1:20AM

While Fujitsu's design entrants already boggled our minds here at CEATEC, KDDI au is looking to take things one step further by actually shipping a pair of decidedly futuristic handsets in Japan. Just months after the iida sub-brand was formally launched, the Ply and Prismoid are making their debuts on the show floor. The latter sports a 2.7-inch primary display, a 0.6-inch OLED sub-display, a microSD expansion slot and a design to die for; the former packs a 3.2 megapixel camera, 1seg TV tuner and a 3-inch panel. Have a look at the gallery below (and video past the break) if you're yearning to see just how lovely a dumbphone can be, and trust us when we say you've only yourself to blame if you carelessly let this opportunity pass you by.

Gallery: iida Ply and Prismoid hands-on

Continue reading iida Ply and Prismoid phones strut their stuff at CEATEC (video)

KDDI's curious Ply goes from concept to reality in one years' time

by Chris Ziegler posted Sep 9th 2009 @ 7:51AM

This phone began life as a member of Japanese carrier KDDI au's ongoing Design Project series, a line of concepts geared at envisioning tomorrow's phones -- and a pretty impressive number of those concepts ultimately go on to become production phones. In checking out the Ply concept last year, we said "the phone itself is pretty stunningly beautiful, so we'd love to see it on the streets of Tokyo even if it meant nixing the printer," and indeed, that's what they've done; the original idea was for each "layer" of the phone to represent some wild function like printing or pico-projecting, but now, the layer tabs are nothing more than stylized buttons accessing totally pedestrian features like keylock and camera. Here's our take: when your phone looks this much like five pieces of wood sandwiched together, that's a totally acceptable sacrifice to make. It'll be available in three colors later this month as a member of KDDI's iida designer series, which means that if you're outside Japan, your odds of getting in on it are precisely zero.

LiMo Foundation now counts KDDI and Immersion among membership

by Chris Ziegler posted Aug 12th 2009 @ 8:54AM

Though it doesn't have the star power of Android or (arguably) the Symbian Foundation, LiMo's still slaving away on devices and picking up support, largely in Japan where NTT DoCoMo played a major role in its creation. Following a finalization of its Release 2 specs a couple months back, the Foundation's now adding a couple additional big players into its ranks that should help it penetrate even further in Japan, too: KDDI, rival to DoCoMo and operator of the country's CDMA airwaves, and Immersion, a (the?) big player in haptics. Japan's Softbank is already on board, too, so at this point, these guys pretty much have the Japanese wireless trifecta under their belts.

Hitachi's 720p Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Wooo now shipping in Japan

by Chris Ziegler posted Jul 31st 2009 @ 2:52PM

If you're more concerned about your ability to record stunning high-definition video on the road than you are about your ability to comfortably and conveniently say the name of your phone, look no further than the latest model in Hitachi's Wooo series over in Japan. Announced earlier in the year, the Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Wooo stands starkly as one of the longest, most unfortunate model names in phone history, but we suspect that the presence of 30fps 720p recording will quickly allay any disappointment you may have with branding. Anyhow, it's finally available now on KDDI au, the country's big CDMA provider -- so go on, show us what sort of Oscar-caliber stuff you can cook up.

Japan signs off on carriers' LTE plans

by Chris Ziegler posted Jun 23rd 2009 @ 7:59AM

It's not often that we have an opportunity to point and laugh at the crushing antiquity of anything in Japan. Look, don't get your hopes up, we can't really do it here either -- but with LTE, it seems like the rest of the world has finally reached technological parity. Japan has just gotten around to approving its 4G carriers' game plans, with NTT DoCoMo likely first out of the gate thanks to deployments in 2010 (around the same time that Verizon expects to have some markets in action). eMobile, Softbank, and current CDMA carrier KDDI will follow on through 2011, with a grand total of over a trillion yen (about $10.4B) being spent in the next half decade. Don't get us wrong -- we're sure the handsets will still be cooler than anything we can get, and they'll likely have the entire country blanketed in 4G before most others have just a handful of cities live, but at least they're not on 5G. Yet.

[Via IntoMobile, thanks Lauren]

Hitachi's 720p Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Wooo gets hands-on treatment

by Darren Murph posted May 25th 2009 @ 8:33AM

It may be a Japan exclusive for now, but Hitachi's Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Wooo has folks drooling from sea to shining sea. The cats over at Akihabara News were able to take a glimpse while KDDI unveiled its summer lineup, and they seemed to be quite impressed with the video quality and ease of use. Check the read link for a video of the flip phone in action, but remember, don't get too attached unless you call Japan home.

KDDI au unveils summer '09 lineup: e-books, solar power, and 720p recording

by Chris Ziegler posted May 24th 2009 @ 11:54PM

Japanese carrier KDDI au has now followed Softbank and NTT DoCoMo in pulling the red velvet cover off its summer 2009 devices, and as always, there are some neat tricks in here. From Toshiba, the Biblio is billed as an e-book reader; granted, it's using an LCD instead of an E-Ink display, but it's a doozy at 3.5 inches at 960 x 480. It features 7GB of user-accessible storage on board for books, and also has a slide-out dynamic keyboard that can display a numeric pad in the portrait orientation or full QWERTY in landscape. Moving on, the Sharp Sportio Water Beat -- as its name suggests -- is a waterproof sports-oriented set with advanced calorie and distance tracking (a la Nike+), but you're still never too far from your true destiny as a couch potato thanks to the phone's one-seg reception. Next, the Hitachi Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Wooo is the latest in the multimedia-centric Wooo series, becoming KDDI's first phone capable of 720p video recording at 30fps -- and there's HDMI-out on board for when the time comes to enjoy your footage. Finally, the SH002 is the realization of Sharp's solar phone concept from earlier this year, delivering one minute of talk time for every 10 minutes of charge time. There are other announcements in the mix here -- eight new phones in total -- but those were the killers of the bunch, and as always, this post is about as close as most North Americans will ever get to them.

[Via Engadget Japanese]

Hitachi's Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Wooo cellphone does 720p video recording

by Darren Murph posted May 22nd 2009 @ 6:58AM

While it won't be the first handset to capture 720p video (hello, OmniaHD!), Hitachi's Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Woo is still apt to garner quite a bit of attention. As the leaked images hosted down below show, this clever flip phone packs 1,280 x 720 video recording, a 5 megapixel sensor, HDMI interface and a microSDHC slot for good measure. A generous tipster has informed us that said phone is slated to launch this coming Monday on KDDI, though we fully expect that envious North Americans won't ever get to toy with one on their home turf. For shame.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Gallery: Hitachi's Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Wooo cellphone does 720p video recording

World's first waterproof solar cellphone from Sharp makes Somalian pirates say arggg!

by Thomas Ricker posted Apr 20th 2009 @ 7:19AM

In continuation of a recent trend of major manufacturers announcing a new-found interest in ~~making a buck off developing nations~~ solar-powered cellphones, AU (KDDI) and Sharp have announced the June launch of this unnamed solar handset. Besides being the world's first waterproof solar handset, it charges to a minute of talk or 2-hours of standby after just 10 minutes in the sun. No other specs were announced though we seriously doubt it'll be a power-sucking feature- or smart-phone. Naturally, it'll still be a boon to people where electricity is scarce but what about the industrious guy who owns the village car battery?

[Via Akihabara News]

Motorola building Android-based cable boxes for Japan's KDDI?

by Nilay Patel posted Apr 14th 2009 @ 5:52PM

Don't know why the Motorola rumors are flying hot and heavy today, but right on top of that connected GPS whisper comes word that the struggling device manufacturer is being tapped to build a new version of KDDI's multifaceted Au Box set-top unit that runs Android instead of the previous custom Linux build. The Au Box, if you'll recall, is a trick little IPTV box with a DVD drive that can rip audio and video and transcode it for transfer or streaming to your cellphone -- kind of like a more flexible Slingbox that costs $3/month for KDDI subscribers. Definitely interesting, especially since Android could make browsing and email extremely easy to implement as well -- hey Moto, maybe you want to ditch your current garbage Stateside cable box lineup and start shipping these things at home?

Update: Turns out there's no Android here at all, according to Moto. Instead it's running on KreaTV platform. Is it just us or did this thing just lose about 50 megafonzies on the cool-o-meter?

[Via CNET]

AU Mobile's iida pico projector for G9 handsets unveiled to a chorus of cheers

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Apr 7th 2009 @ 10:43AM

Unless you're in the thick of it here in the Engadget organization, you can't possibly realize how many desperate (and sometimes, just plain odd) emails we get in the average day. The high weirdness can, at times, become staggering -- dire warnings of robot apocalypse come to mind -- but we do take our responsibility as media darlings and role models very seriously. Case in point: many of you have been asking, "what's up with that iida pico projector for the G9 phone?" Well, we dug up some more details for you, and if you're anywhere near Japan (or Okinawa) you just might want to check this bad boy out. The device boasts approximately 2 hours and 10 minutes of charge time, projects and image anywhere from six to sixty-three inches, and features a 0.5W (mono) speaker. In case this particular handset isn't on your short list, the proj is also compatible with AU S001, VA001, H001, W63CA, W63H, W62CA and W62H series phones. You're welcome.

[Via Pico Projector Info]

KDDI au announces Spring 2009 collection

by Sean Cooper posted Jan 31st 2009 @ 1:46PM

Japan's KDDI au wows with the timely delivery of one of its signature seasonal line changes. Spring 2009 looks to be off to a stunning start with OLED displays, 8-plus megapixel cameras, one-seg TV, 3D display, and just about every wireless connectivity option we can dream up. As per, these are all candybar-style sets with the notable exception of the sliding Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot S001 (black phone above) and the two-way Hitachi H001 (purple phone) above. We've created a gallery for each so hit the read link for the complete rundown.

Continue reading KDDI au announces Spring 2009 collection

Hitachi H001 with 3D display leads up KDDI au's Spring 2009 lineup

by Chris Ziegler posted Jan 29th 2009 @ 1:49AM

So KDDI's latest lineup of new phones features the usual array of 8.1 megapixel cameras, wide VGA displays, one-seg TV tuners, and teleporters, but one particular handset stood out: Hitachi's Wooo H001. The dual-hinge flip's claim to fame -- well, besides the bizarre color scheme -- has to be the stereoscopic IPS display that presumably uses the same parallax barrier method shown off by the carrier late last year. The phone will happily serve up 3D-ified versions of various UI elements and mobile TV content, and when you start to get woozy (or Wooozy, as it were), just flip a switch and you're back to the reassuring flatness you're used to. It'll launch in three colors in April, and naturally, you'll have to be in Japan to get it.

[Via Akihabara News]

Japanese officials to allocate LTE frequencies in June

by Darren Murph posted Jan 26th 2009 @ 9:29AM

Just last month we heard that Japan's CDMA giant (that'd be KDDI) would be throwing its weight behind LTE, and now we have every idea that it'll be filling out an application to prove as much in April. According to a new report in The Mainichi Daily News, Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has decided to begin taking applications for 4G frequency allocation beginning in around three months, while approvals are expected to start in June. NTT Docomo, KDDI, Softbank Mobile and Emobile have all been granted permission to apply, and if we had to bet, we'd say the entire foursome will do just that. Ah, 4G -- so close, yet so far away.

[Thanks, Vagrant]