We got all down and dirty with DoCoMo and Fujitsu's prototype "Separated phone" today at CEATEC, and we can confirm that the device does, in fact do what they say it does. As reported earlier, the device uses Bluetooth to communicate between the phone's two magnetized halves, enabling configurations in everything from standard clamshell to gaming landscape formats. Perhaps the most compelling configuration is one that allows the phone to be held to the ear while one accesses data on the another half, complete with neck cramps. The touchscreen, Symbian S60-based UI was easy enough to use (albeit in Japanese) and features a hearty media playback element, but we were unable to squeeze any commitment to a launch date, price, or probability of seeing the unit on the market. That all said, the demo units were very much operational as you can see for yourself in the video after the break.

DoCoMo and Fujitsu are showing off some interesting phone tech in Japan at this year's CEATEC, particularly a concept device which can be split into two pieces. The gadget features a separate screen and keyboard segment, and the pieces can be configured in a standard flip-phone-like arrangement, or snapped together to form an X1 or Touch Pro-esque landscape QWERTY variation. The two halves are held together by magnets and communicate via Bluetooth. Of course, right now this is very much in the concept phase, and honestly -- aren't we trying to minimize the amount of electronic components we're carting around? Still, it's a fairly slick design, and certainly a new way of thinking about phones. Take another look after the break, and hit the read link for a slew of pics.

According to the Wall Street Journal Asia, Jobs and Co are in Japan working out the details for a domestic iPhone launch. It's no surprise then that Jobs was rumored to have just met with NTT DoCoMo's president, Masao Nakamur, to discuss the deal with the largest carrier in the world's second-largest economy. As usual, Apple seems to be playing the carriers off one another with rumors that The Steve is courting Softbank as well. However, "people familiar with the situation" say that DoCoMo is the first choice. While the revenue sharing is a sticking point as usual, WSJA says that Apple doesn't expect to have any difficulty closing the deal. Funny, that's what everyone was saying about Vodafone in Europe.

P.S. -For what it's worth, NTT DoCoMo does not run a GSM / EDGE network. Any iPhone released on DoCoMo's FOMA service will be UMTS / HSDPA -- right, the 3G iPhone.

Everybody is sworn to silence until the auction is over, so we won't be seeing much more information about this until it's all over in the spring of next year, but for now it's still fun to speculate. Business Week is doing quite a bit of that speculating as well, with word that DoCoMo, KDDI, SK Telecom and even China (through the T-Mobile and Global Tower invested Blackstone Group) could be chipping in a few billion here and there to spice things up for Google and friends in the 700MHz C Block auction. DoCoMo, which got burned in the US a while back with pre-Cingular AT&T Wireless, mentioned to Business Week that it'd be interested in partnering with Google for its wireless network, and the other carrier might not be talking but have to be at least considering the possibility of being involved in US wireless data in a big way, and KDDI has a history of being chummy with Google in Japan. The word is that average North American data service bills are less than $10 a month, and are expected to grow to $38+ a month by 2012 -- and who wouldn't want in on that action? As growth slows in Europe and Asia, it seems only natural for the innovators over there to head over here and kick things into gear, but we'll try not too far ahead of ourselves.

[Via The Inquirer]

NTT DoCoMo is launching a new mobile phone / bracelet combo aimed at helping youngsters stay safe on the mean streets of Japan. The two-part system combines the FOMA F801i phone, which adds safety features like a 100-decibel alarm, high intensity flashing LEDs, and the ability to automatically notify family in the event of an emergency, and a bracelet remote control which communicates with the device. The phone can be set to provide its location to registered parties, and will turn itself on if it has been switched off. Coupled with the phone is the "amulet style" bracelet, which can be used to locate a misplaced phone, lock the handset, or send a message to another phone (if the device and bracelet are out of range for over five minutes). We suspect that for worried and / or nosey parents, this is a dream come true.

You know how the old saying goes: when one NTT DoCoMo office opens, another closes. Okay, we just totally made that up, but it's appropriate here seeing how Japan's largest carrier is shutting down its French subsidiary -- named "DoCoMo Europe (France) S.A.S.," if you must know -- and replacing it with a more pedestrian "representative office" in January of next year. Ultimately, the move means very little to anyone outside NTT DoCoMo; the subsidiary had been created to help Europe and Japan stay on the same page regarding UMTS standardization way back in '98, and now that said task is complete, there's not much purpose for its existence. For what it's worth, the newly minted representative office will be "monitoring" Europe's telecom industry, so be warned, folks: NTT DoCoMo is watching you.

It's just not fair. While we're lucky to bear witness to a single hot handset release per month, our Japanese brethren just received a batch of 10 new handsets to swoon over courtesy of NTT DoCoMo. The very best of the best from the new FOMA 905i series includes the Panasonic Viera P905iTV and 5 megapixel Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot SO905iCS. As you'd expect from a handset sporting the Viera branding, the P905iTV is all about the mobile TV with a feature that smooths-out 1Seg's 15fps mobile broadcast rate to display it at 30fps on that 3.5-inch 480 x 854 pixel display. The 17.7-mm (0.7-inch) slab also packs HSDPA and a battery capable of a 1-month standby. Otherwise, it'll pump that TV-to-vein fix for 6-hours straight or up to 80 hours of SD-Audio or 65 hours of WMA if that's your preference. Meanwhile, the Cyber-shot SO905iCS brings a 5 megapixel CMOS camera with 3x optical zoom and 2.7-inch, 480 x 864 pixel display to the Japanese market. It features an LED flash, face recognition and anti-shake stabilization while busting a 24-mm (nearly 1-inch) girth. Plenty more of these two in the gallery below.

[Via The Unwired and Impress]

We've certainly seen instances of intrabody communications at work, but now NTT DoCoMo is looking to join the fun and hopefully tie cellphones into the equation. Apparently, the firm has "various devices" in development that could utilize an "advanced handset" in certain forms of wearable electronics to give users the ability to unlock doors, make payments and exchange data with a friend with a simple touch. The prototype mobile packs a sensor produced by Kaiser Technology Company, and while the current version can only transmit data at 40-kilobytes per second, a speedier flavor is surely on the horizon. [Warning: Read link requires subscription]

There it is, the HTC HT1100, aka Nike, aka the Touch II WinMo 6 Professional slider we've been anticipating. This FOMA handset packs HSDPA (naturally, for DoCoMo) and GSM for international roaming while representing HTC's second handset to feature the TouchFLO interface. The QVGA display has been trimmed back to 2.6-inches while the sliding keypad chunks it up a bit to 112 x 51 x 16.9-mm / 130-grams. 802.11a/b/g WiFi, SIP support, Bluetooth, 2 megapixel camera (with a 1 megapixeler up front), FM tuner (?), and microSD round out the specs. So it's official, now we just need a release a bit say, closer to home.

We've all accepted the reality that Japan has the straight up coolest handsets on the planet, and this lineup of NTT DoCoMo's new flagship 9 series does nothing but up the ante. From the pic's top left to bottom right, we have the NEC N904i, Sharp SH904i, Panasonic P904i, Fujitsu F904i, and Mitsubishi D904i. As an upgrade to the FOMA 903i series, the new 904i stable brings a pile of new goodies to the table with features like "2in1" support (more on that in a moment), Uta-hodai (full track download), and Chokkan Game (game downloads with motion control), with One-Seg mobile TV reception and HSDPA on select models The 2in1 support is one of our faves, with two separate phone numbers, email addresses, and address books, all accessed via a mode-switching function which allows a, b, or dual-mode -- no word if dual-mode enables both numbers at once. We're also loving the Chokkan Game support, but the press release shared no detail about the touted "intuitive motion" beyond mention of finger tracing, tilting and waving as means of control. Pocket Wii, anyone?

NTT DoCoMo is poised to unleash yet another torrent of new models on an unsuspecting (or are they "suspecting" by now?) Japanese public, this time around with the 904i series. As the name suggests, these models follow up the 903i series launched just a few months back, reinforcing our hatred for the rate of product development exhibited by pretty much every other carrier and manufacturer in the world. Shown here are the D904i, SH904i, and F904i in clockwise order from the upper left, from Mitsubishi, Sharp, and Fujitsu, respectively. Specs aren't yet official, but as usual, we can expect these phones to rock unreal displays, clean our bathrooms, and create world peace.

We were just reminiscing about the wonderful, albeit far too brief time we had at Spring CTIA last month, which naturally led us to start digging through our piles of leftover pictures from the event. The NTT DoCoMo booth was a special treat for many folks at the show who've never had the opportunity to experience the Japanese carrier's strange and wonderful wares in their natural environment -- Japan, that is -- so we took our sweet time perusing the goods. Even for jaded old hacks like ourselves who've pretty much seen it all, many of NTT's handsets continue to widen our eyes and put smiles on our faces when we finally have the chance to play with them. We hope this little gallery conveys even a small fraction of the fun we had at the booth!

The actual process of encoding and decoding voice for transmission over the air is probably one of the less appreciated sciences (arts?) in the phone game, so we've got to take our hats off to NTT DoCoMo for circling back and taking another look at the process. It seems our favorite FOMA carrier has gotten together with DoCoMo Communications Laboratories USA (who else?) to lay the groundwork for a new vocoder that takes about half the processing power as methods currently in use, allegedly without sacrificing call quality. It's far past the theoretical stage, too: HTC Zs were used to demonstrate the tech at Wireless Technology Park 2007 last week in Japan. Of course, less processing power means less juice drain, so we're happy to throw our support behind this little initiative.

NTT DoCoMo joined the million-plus battery recall party late last year, and now it has started a new party all its own -- recalling SIM cards en masse. The Japanese carrier said that it would be recalling 240,000 SIM cards for existing subscribers due to roaming problems with the cards. The carrier said that the recalled SIMs could malfunction when trying to be used outside of Japan (read: abroad), making the accompanying handsets useless for talk or data. New SIM cards are coming to the affected handsets for free, so the next time you take that i-mode handset somewhere outside NTT DoCoMo's area to not work, make sure you've swapped that SIM first, okay? Otherwise, you may get mad while roaming and take lighter to card.