Net Results: It's a bit of a cliché to gaze with an indulgent smile upon some ancient version of a technology in common use today and ponder How Things Have Changed, writes Karlin Lillington.
But on a recent trip to Japan, even a group of cynical telecoms journalists from the UK and Ireland found it difficult not to be amused and amazed by mobile phone technology of only 15 to 20 years ago, the dawn of the mobile era.
We were at an NEC handset factory an hour outside Tokyo, eyeing the famous NEC brick - a mobile that helped launch the mobile age and became synonymous with yuppie stockbrokers and stockbrokerettes in the greedy late 80s. Sitting perched in a little Perspex case, the brick, in today's era of lightweight mobiles that can fit almost imperceptibly in a pocket, is a reminder of how quickly electronics grew smaller as chips shrank and functionality expanded in the 80s and 90s.
Lifting it up made us laugh: this model wasn't nicknamed the brick for nothing. Likewise, we all wanted to handle its successor from NEC in the 90s, the first clamshell phone on the market, which in 2005 seems like an enormous toy with a giant keypad. In size only a modest improvement on the brick, that first clamshell was at least less of a doorstop in weight. In Japan, however, this is a seminal model that perhaps one day will acquire the designation the Japanese formally issue to special items of extreme cultural, social and artistic import, National Cultural Treasure.
For no nation loves clamshells like the Japanese love clamshells - almost every handset you see in use today is one of these foldover models, and they make up over 90 per cent of the models sold, according to the manager of one Tokyo mobile shop I visited.
This is one of the reasons why Japanese handsets generally look very much the same. Except for small design details, most handsets are clamshells about the size of a deck of cards. For Europeans used to continuously changing models aimed at a style-conscious market that wants the latest phones as badly as the latest Nikes, this seemed strange. Weren't the Japanese supposed to be both one of the most style-conscious and technically sophisticated nations on earth, someone asked one of the NEC executives. Didn't they want their new phone to look significantly different from their old phone? "People buy new models for new or additional functions, so the handsets may look similar," the executive replied. It's only when you delve into the current handset ranges, and the technologies available to users, that you see what he means. Shape seems pretty irrelevant when you can buy handsets designed with inbuilt finger sensors that unlock your phone; handsets that make it easy to download TV programmes into your mobile for later viewing; handsets that can scan two dimensional barcodes to link you to websites for further information on products or services, or to upload information from a business card directly to your mobile's address book.
Some Japanese 3G phones also can be used to check into flights and issue boarding cards, access the subway, or use vending machines.
I didn't get to test drive all these things, but while in Japan I did get to use a 3G handset and try out the barcode function, video calls and i-mode, the mobile internet network pioneered by Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo, used by 44 million Japanese, and to be launched in Ireland this autumn by O2. I was impressed by the crispness and lucidity of the screen, the clarity of the line (most people thought I was making a landline call when I made a few test calls abroad), and the coolness of the barcode feature (which, however, won't be available on Irish handsets anytime soon).
And I really liked what I saw of i-mode. I was limited to accessing only some of the few English language sites among the 4,000 official and 80,000 unofficial i-mode sites in Japan, but connection times were extremely fast (you just push the special i-mode button on the handset) and the information generally was formatted for a mobile screen in an intuitive way, unlike what you often get with WAP.
Will it be a success in Ireland? I'm guessing it may very likely do well here, and better than in the UK. Irish people like to use mobiles and though they may not be big WAP users, I'd wager a handset that makes i-mode only a button-push away might convert many to accessing data rather than just making calls or sending texts. One feature, which allows people to send e-mails with animations swiftly to others, may entice SMS fans.
Costs are fairly low with i-mode, too, averaging about a cent per kilobyte sent or downloaded in Japan and European markets that already have the service. Users need to set up a subscription for sites they like, but many subscriptions are free and some content is free; users only pay for services or items they want to buy, like ringtones (already a big, big hit with Irish mobile users) and games (likewise, very popular). In most markets, operators have capped subscriber fees at around €3 per month, so subscriptions are also micropayments, not major purchases.
