This is the place to pose with your new bit of mobile magic. I'll start of with my new Sharp Aquos Keitai that I ordered 2 weeks ago. Finally it arrived last night and I must say that I'm very impressed. Colour is silver gold. Basically it's one of those colour changing based metals that change depending on the light. The "Real" price is 79000 yen !! Of course nobody pays that because everyone buys the phone with a 1 year contract so then the phone only cost 27000 yen or in my case 19000 yen thanks to bonus customer points. Anyway on with the features. The entire outer casing is metal yet very light. There's a real quality feel to it for sure. The screen as you'd probably guessed by the phone's name is the same used in Sharp's Aquos TV range. The screen can also rotate to make it in to a wide screen display (Correct ratio as well) It has all the standard crap such as inferred, Bluetooth, USB connecting abilities, Micro SD, Music & video player, camera, video camera, Video phone and so on. Extra goodies include a real internet browser unlike most other phones. Surprisingly the compatibility is very good. You can't view YouTube videos due to their odd encoding but you can see other streaming media plus site such as Yahoo mail and of course good old ASSEMbler. In fact some of the posts I made earlier today were done on the bus. Below you can see the ASSEMbler site loading. The browser actually renders the pages pretty fast too. Much faster than the Wii. Being a new phone you'd expect it to have better quality games. Well I'm glad to say this is true. Namco ported over PSX Teken and Ridge Racer. I don't have Teken (never will either) but I do have the trial version of Ridge Racer Wide Screen (as well as 8 other games) built in to the phone. This version is miles above the version I had on my old phone. The game now features ALL the speech, tracks, cars etc from the original plus runs at a very nice 30fps. The icing on the cake however is the 1 seg Digital TV. Not only do you get digital TV but all the extras that go with it such as channel information and services, subtitles and bilingual option in stereo for those programs that support it. As you can see from the shot, the image quality is very nice. Yakumo
Nice features! It is just a shame it is butt ugly!!! How does that rotate thing work? I mean, with the hinge there.....
When closed it looks like a 70's cigarette case or something... I don't see it doing much that my crappy Nokia 6280 doesn't do, I have web, decent 3D games, videos etc etc bar the obvious rotating the screen bit. All those PS1 ports are multi-phone now, you can get them off the interweb for a couple of quid each.
Battery life is pretty good. talk time - 180 hours stand by time - 380 hours video call - 100 minutes (with both cameras running - internal & external) digital TV / video player - 3 hours music player (MP4) - ?? no info on this. I'll have to give it a test. Ugly :crying: I really like the retro design. makes a difference from the normal plastic looking stuff you get. The rotate thing is using some new patented technology that Sharp bought from Cycloid (or is that the technology name?) anyway, it's like a hinge I guess the flows from the upright position to the horizontal one the clicks in to place effortlessly. Ah, you see that's why you say crappy Nokia 6280. I only listed a fraction of the stuff this has. Other pointless stuff (for most people) is the ability to read digital comics or view Microsoft Word, Excel or Power Point files. The camera on this one can do video at 640x480 (ASF MPEG4) or 176x144 (H.263 .3gp). I've seen Samsung's latest offering (for use in Japan) and that doesn't come close. It is good to see that the western phones are now getting good PSX ports as well. Can you guys get stuff from other game companies such as Sega, Taito, Konami and Capcom. I'm thinking of getting the Star Wars speed racer by Sega. If you can get that I truly recommend it. Looks very good !! Tachikoma, why don't you post some of your Nokia's unique features as well :nod: It will be good to see because the Nokia phones here are shite. The main selling point of them here is that they have 5 language settings and very compact :shrug: There are two types. The more recent phones use 3G but I don't know if it's GSM or CDMA. Probably GSM I guess because of the navigation software. My old phone wasn't 3G so probably CDMA. Yakumo
Here's the review for Ridge Racer, not that you need it, but others might be interested: http://uk.gamespot.com/mobile/driving/ridgeracer/index.html Here's some 6280 specs: Active matrix, 262,144-colour display (320 x 240 pixels) # Still image resolutions: 1600x1200 (2MP), 1024x768 (1MP), 640x480 (VGA) # Still images file format: .jpg # Still zoom: 8x digital zoom # Video resolutions: 640x480 (VGA), 352x288, 176x144, 128x96 * Integrated music player for MP3/AAC/eAAC+/M4A formats * Integrated video player for download and playback or for streaming: 3GPP, H.263 video, MPEG-4, and AMR * Use MP3/AAC/eACC+ tracks for ringing/game/alert tones, as well as MIDI/polyphonic tones * FM stereo radio # Bluetooth wireless technology: Wide range of profiles and APIs for seamless connectivity # Infrared # USB 2.0 full speed via Pop-Port™ interface # WAP 2.0, XHTML browsing over TCP/IP # 3GPP video streaming Java™ MIDP 2.0, CLDC 1.1 (Connected Limited Device Configuration (J2ME)) You can get mobile office apps for all phones now, the Samsung D900 has it built in, things like pdf viewers, word and excel stuff, doesn't interest me so not really looked it up. I don't think they have as many of the arcade/ps1 ports as over there obviously, and as they charge so much over here for them I am not surprised they aren't selling as well.
Tachikoma, that Ridge Racer review is for the 3 year old shitty version ! The one I have is the new Namco made game called Ridge Racer Wide Screen. This plays, looks and sounds like the original. That one reviewed is only published by Namco US. The game is in fact by and published by (In Japan) MobileBrains who licensed it from Namco. Looks like the west is still behind after all I'll take a video of this one if you're interested in seeing it. By the way, mobile phone games in the UK can't be much more than Japan. Ours cost from 250 yen to 580 yen and then you also have to pay for the data being downloaded to the phone. Then on top of that some companies want you to pay a monthly membership charge or like Sega, only give you 18 credits so you have to pay to download more! F*ing rip off! I like the ability to play many different audio formats on your phone Tachi' Japanese phones or at least Sharp always go for the bloody data protection crap which means you need to reencode everything to ACC MP4. Japanese phones don't use midi either but SMAF which is like midi. At least we have a nice Yamaha DSP set up. Yakumo
I think they are about a fiver each off most sites, I seem to remember seeing loads of them on the Namco Mobile site, but they didn't have a list of stockists for me to find out how much they were. I wouldn't mind trying that new one, see if it runs on my phone, but I doubt I could even find a dodgy torrent of it, let alone a legit download site in English.
Luckily the controls can be changed to suit your needs. I have 5 as accelerate and 0 as break. The D-pad controls the direction while 1 changes view. To can have manual gears as well but I think that's too cluttered for a mobile. Anyway, once you get the buttons configured to the way you like them you'll really enjoy the game. I've only got the trial version so I'm stuck with 1 song and one course and a handful of cars. I really need to download the full version. yakumo
Softbank has a new lineup of very sexy phones. They've got this one that's basically like a box... I can't explain it. Just a box. It's big too... nice big screen (no swivel). That Aquos that Yakumo has is plastered on billboards. I'm tempted, but am holding off for now.
Go on mate, give in ! It's a very nice phone !! Only today I was watching some British comedies (Alan Partridge series 2) on the train from the memory card, complete with surround sound! The only two things I don't like about it are that the video out only works forgames while my other phone's video out worked for everything, even the menus. The second thing is that the video camera on this one is shite! It will only record for 30 seconds for some stupid reason. The instructions say it can do 30fps 640 x 480 MPEG4 but I can't find that option. There is one MODE option that can't be selected for some odd reason. I'll have to ask Softbank how to get the video camera working. Yakumo
It's just a question of taste. I think western phones are as dull as anything. They all look the same which is why I like these stylish models Softbank are putting out. A breath of fresh air if you will. Like I said, it's all a question of taste. Good news is that I managed to get the video camera working correctly But it still not as good as my old phone's one :shrug: Yakumo
