(keitai-l) Re: smartphones in Japan (was: Fukuoka Kyushu 3G Vodafone coverage)

From: Nik Frengle <nfrengle_at_gmail.com>
Date: 05/30/05
Message-ID: <429B2A92.4070203@gmail.com>
Arnold,
You make some fairly insightful points into the mind of a Japanese 
consumer. I would like, however, to comment on those points:
Arnold P. Siboro wrote:

>1. alarms
>-5 alarms
>-each can be set to to daily, certain days, weekdays, weekends and one
>time.
>-each alarm can be set to display both message and picture
>  
>
True. My wife mentioned the same thing when I brought her home an 802SE. 
My answer to her was less-than-ideal: Actually the 802SE has unlimited 
alarms, but you need to use the calendar function. This function, along 
with the tasks, memos, and address book functions, synchronise with 
Outlook beautifully, by the way, and have another feature which I find 
marvellous: You can push a button with the phone folded shut, and have 
the small external display show you your next appointment. The use of 
the alarms in the calendar is clearly not something that Japanese 
consumers are used to, however.  My wife continued to use her SH-53 as 
an alarm clock.

>2. picture/video editor
>  
>
Absolutely true, but then again how many people actually use this 
feature?  You can put a frame on at the time when you take a picture, 
which is a more likely user behaviour, but you are right, the handset 
lacks a dedicated picture/video editor. 

>3. privacy features
>-8 different access locks
>-5 different incoming call restriction
>  
>
I would actually argue that this level is clearly not present in all 
Japanese-oriented phones. My Sharp handsets have had access locks, but 
not 8, and only 3 kinds of call restrictions.  But, yes, clearly the 
security features of the 802SE are somewhat limited.  It is a bit of 
non-sequitor, but I was seriously considering suggesting a 'furin' mode 
of privacy. The reason I say this is because, despite the many levels of 
privacy modes, a knowledgable person (ie wife) could find some fairly 
strong evidence of a culprit's (ie husband's) misdeeds if she knew where 
to look.  On the SH53 and most other Japanese-oriented Sharp models, for 
example, you can put a lock on one person, but if an e-mail comes from 
that person, there is no restriction on reading it, unless you 
separately explicitly save all mails from that person to a special 
folder, in which case the sub-display still says that you have an e-mail 
from that person, and the mailed history shows in absolutely every case 
whom you may have most recently mailed. 

>4. one-step access to enable/disable "manner mode", add one more step
>and you have a choice of various combinations of manner mode (sound,
>vibration, recording etc).
>  
>
Actually, manner mode is a one-step setting, and in the case of mode 
settings, the 802SE is actually pretty good: It has 7 fully configurable 
modes, a couple of which are triggered by the presence of a bluetooth 
headset.

>I don't know all non-native Japanese handsets, but I tried Nokia 6650,
>Motorola A1000 and the result is more or less the same.
>  
>
I think it is clear that in general Japanese handsets have more settings 
than their non-Japanese counterparts.  I also think that in many cases 
these settings don't bring  a lot of value to a user.  In other cases, 
for example a quite simple one, where if you use certain emoji in the 
first couple of characters of an e-mail, a cool animated wallpaper is 
automatically generated on the handset side, there are brilliant 
features that European handset makers should clearly look at.
I think there are clearly issues with user interface, both in Japan and 
outside.  In Japan, one of the issues is actually *too many* features to 
comfortably master for a user.  Outside of Japan it is things like 
requiring users to set their own e-mail gateways, voicemail numbers, 
etc. I am not saying the 802SE is perfect, because it is clearly not. 
But it is also, for me as a 'sarariman', the most useful handset I have 
used since I have been in Japan (12 years, 9 handsets). It does those 
things that I consider important very well: Outlook synchronisation, 
appointment reminders, bluetooth headset integration, voice dialing, and 
web browsing.  It also is easy to test Java midlets on--just load them 
onto the Memory card's 'Other' folder and then install them on the 
handset from there. Really simple.  And it runs  MIDP 2.1, with a few 
extras, so it is pretty standard to code for it. I know, these things 
are probably a lot more important to me than to the average Japanese 
user, of whom my wife is a good example: She switched back to her SH-53. 
Therein lies the rub...

Best,
Nik
Received on Mon May 30 17:56:43 2005