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]

The term "DoCoMo" is usually accompanied by a barrage of wild, high-end mobile hardware, so we have a tendency to sit up and pay attention whenever the storied name appears on a carrier anywhere in the world. India's Tata Teleservices -- of which NTT DoCoMo holds a 26 percent share -- is set to launch a newly-branded GSM service as Tata DoCoMo in the southern part of the country this month, followed by a "gradual" expansion nationwide. The logo's pretty awesome, the name's pretty awesome -- now we just need some Japanese domestic market handsets to go along with it and we'll be in business.

There are many things an NTT DoCoMo handset can do in the year 2009 -- tune in live television, shoot HD video, tell you whether you need to be wearing sunscreen, and pay your train fare, just to name a few. Inexplicably, though, you can't bust out a white-hot Jethro Tull solo on anything currently in the carrier's lineup, so we're happy to see that its Institute for Advanced Technology is hard at work on a modular hardware system that would allow users to attach all sorts of wacky peripherals to their phones. Billing them as "hardware upgrades," DoCoMo is showing off a blood tester, e-ink reader, and -- yes -- a flute as examples of attachments we could see down the road by the time they commercialize the tech around 2015. We're not sure why Bluetooth isn't a better option for some of this stuff, but we then again, we know better than to question a Japanese carrier's infinite wisdom. Follow the break for video of the prototype in action.

It didn't take a keen eye to realize that NTT DoCoMo's recently-announced T-01A from Toshiba was little more than a TG01 rebrand, and it turns out the relationship between the two devices is even stronger than we'd already guessed. DoCoMo just issued a press release today touting the fact that it has hooked up with Spain's Telefonica to jointly launch the phone in both companies' markets -- and furthermore, they're exploring ways to expand their cooperation in the future, including (but not limited to) "a joint study of possible services and applications for open OS handsets." Japanese carriers have a rich history of partnering with their international counterparts -- DoCoMo's investment in AT&T's Hawaiian network, for example -- but unfortunately, very rarely does the partnership result in getting Japanese domestic market hardware launched elsewhere, which is a tragedy as far as we're concerned.

We've seen oodles of dual-mode handsets, but none quite like this. Rather than boasting two radios, two keyboards or two faces, NEC's N-06A -- which is gearing up to debut on NTT DoCoMo over in Japan -- actually has two purposes. Aside from making calls on the carrier's FOMA network, the phone can actually double as a wireless access point when AP Mode is enabled. The handset packs a cutting-edge Atheros AR6002 module, which enables handsets to operate in infrastructure mode, the primary wireless connectivity framework employed in access points, routers, laptops and other WLAN devices. In other words, your netbook (and seven other WiFi-enabled devices) can hop online via your handset, and it's far easier than the wacky tethering methods we deal with today. Other specs include an 8.1 megapixel camera, HSDPA / WLAN models and a miraculous 3.2-inch touchscreen with an 854 x 480 resolution. There's no mention of a price or ship date for the handset, but more than that, we're thirsty for details on when this chipset will be featured in a handset that's headed to US soil. Check the full release after the break.

8 megapixel cameras and 3-plus-inch wide VGA displays are the order of the day in NTT DoCoMo's 18-strong summer 2009 range of phones from Panasonic, LG, Fujitsu, NEC, Sharp, HTC, and Toshiba, but a few are definitely standing out for us. First would be the unforgettable N-09A from NEC, integrating patent leather right into the phone's case; it's not often that you need to condition your handset with saddle soap, so that one definitely caught our eye. Next up, we have a couple smartphones (not to say that anything in this lineup can be labeled "dumb" by any stretch) from HTC and Toshiba -- the expected HT-03A and T-01A, respectively, which are localized rebrands of the Magic and TG01. Only a Japanese carrier lineup oozes enough machismo to make a TG01 look like a 16-ounce can of weak juice, so our hats go off to you, NTT DoCoMo -- thanks for ruining one of 2009's most promising devices for us. Hey, at least they're offering the Magic in both white and black.

Upon first read, we were inclined to believe that the words gracing our eyes here simply couldn't be true. But then we realized that this is NTT DoCoMo, and beyond the realm of feasibility is where this company resides. In a beautiful attempt to provide superhuman-like hearing to all Earthlings, the company has developed a highly efficient mobile spatial audio transmission technology that enables "a mobile phone user to assign a spatial position to each sound source when listening to multiple sound sources, such as during a game or a conference call." Put simply, the tech allows a user listening with headphones to "hear each speaker's voice as if it were coming from a unique direction, creating a virtual face-to-face communication environment." We're not told specifically how many voices the average bird can hear before it becomes too overwhelming, but we'll go out on a limb here and say three or four, max.

At a glance, an unassuming little smartphone like the HTC Magic doesn't really seem like it'd stand a chance against the beastly hardware unleashed every season by Japanese carriers, but here's the thing: it's going to be Japan's first released Android phone, which makes it a pretty big deal anyway. A tweaked version of the Magic has just passed the FCC as the HT-03A, falling into line with the classic naming convention employed for HTC handsets on NTT DoCoMo -- and the FCC filing means that it'll have global roaming for frequent flyers. We can't help but feel like the Samsung i7500 is somehow more technologically appropriate to kick off Japan's Android offerings, but hey, we suppose it's a start.

[Via Akihabara News and memn0ck]

While RIM and Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo still don't know why their BlackBerry Bold is feeling a little toasty around the keyboard, the duo has ruled out a likely culprit, the battery, as its unwelcome heat source. Word on the street is an estimated 30 people have issued complaints about the mobile device heating up while recharging, with around 4,000 units being sold before DoCoMo halted sales. One analyst speculates the issue -- which so far has affected only Japan -- may be based on region-specific software of other customizations. We're sure the pair are working around the clock to get to the bottom of this malfunction, but in the meantime, we recommend dusting off the ol' 8707h to get that retro BlackBerry feel -- y'know, just for kicks.

Here's one that's guaranteed to rub loyal T-Mobile subscribers the wrong way. Based on a specifications sheet on the Japanese BlackBerry site, the forthcoming Bold -- which is destined for NTT DoCoMo -- has a fourth 3G band in addition to the 850/1900/2100MHz bands found on the US model. The addition of 800MHz 3G covers the operator's FOMA Plus Area network, which is used in less populated areas throughout Japan. Needless to say, T-Mob users are probably wondering why they can't get a version with AWS 3G baked in, but we get the feeling they'll be wondering for eons.

[Via Boy Genius Report]

That other massive international collaboration for a standardized Linux-based mobile platform, the LiMo Foundation, is still toiling away at building its global empire -- but the good news is that Release 2 is now ready to rumble, albeit a few weeks behind schedule. The new version -- a collaboration among a slew of Foundation members -- adds enhancements for location-based services, improved security, high-end multimedia, and other miscellany that hope to make LiMo competitive with the best that Android and others have to offer in 2009. Speaking of 2009, LiMo now says that six "major" carriers have committed to launching handsets running the latest version of the platform this year -- NTT DoCoMo, Telefonica, Orange, SK Telecom, Verizon, and Vodafone -- which is a pretty powerful testament to the pull that LiMo has at the moment. Delivering on those commitments, of course, is another matter altogether.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Given just how poorly most every other carrier company has been doing, we can't imagine the suits at NTT DoCoMo frowning about this. The Japanese wireless carrier has just outed its earnings for the nine months ending December 2008, and while the tail end was expectedly less-than-awesome, the nine month snapshot wasn't too shabby. Net income slipped 30 percent in October to December to $1.01 billion compared to $1.45 billion in the same window a year earlier, but a 16 percent increase in net profit (from $4.2 billion to $4.8 billion) was realized in the April to December '08 time frame. Moving forward, the company noted that its ongoing strategy was to "cut back on handset subsides and put the savings toward reducing tariffs had helping the company to retain customers" -- a mantra that was shared a few months earlier. For those hungry for more data points, give that read link a poke.