Music Porter X on sale next weekend

It was first shown off at last years CEATEC, but NTT DoCoMo announced today that the MUSIC PORTER X from Mitsubishi will go on sale from 8th April.

It is a slide-style handset designed for the those who like their music on their mobile. It has 1GB off internal memory and is the first mobile to offer the digital satelite broadcasting music service [Moba Ho!].

The line-up offered is called G-Pack and includes 15 channels; Oricon, Billboard and various different genre stations. [Moba Ho!] will cost you 980yen per month.

The audio player will play ATRAC3, ATRAC3plus, MP3 and (i-motion)AAC. Normal radio can also be played as well as apparently the sound to TV Channels 1-3.

Included in the box you will find mic/antenna/remote control headphones (yes headphones not earphones!), BeatJam audio software and USB cable. A docking cradle is sold seperately, to which you are able to attach external speakers.

Other points worth a mention are: only the one colour - Safari Green, 3.2megapixel camera, no external memory and no Felica!

If you want to check out the MUSIC PORTER X, you can listen to the HMV Japan Countdown Moba Ho! channel on the handset at HMV stores in an around the Tokyo/Yokohama area during the month of April.

au announce W43T

Today KDDI announced a new WIN model from Toshiba to be available from late April.

Toshiba's contribution to the spring lineup was of course Japans first HDD keitai. Going by its performance in the weekly sales rankings and its hefty discounts from the original price, the fact that it is massive may have turned many concumers away.

This time round the main feature of this handset is its support for "3D Navi". Basically it is the normal navigation function with selcted points and intersections etc in three dimension graphics.

They say the onboard 3D graphic engine will also be used in 3D Brew games.

Like all new models it supports au's LISMO music service, and has dedicated buttons on the front to control the music player.

Other features include a 3.2megapixel camera, stereo speakers, a miniSD slot, PC site browser, Hello Messenger, infra-red and QR Code reader. Common with recent Toshiba models it also has "Jisho Supa" english-japanese, japanese-english dictionary preinstalled on the internal memory.

The big thing missing seems to be EZ Felica, ie. osaifu-keitai functionality! If you have read much of previous articles, you will know I can be quite strict on that front.

At work I must write organization, not organisation. I must write color not colour. Just know I read through the above and was horrified to find that I actually wrote intersection instead of junction! I have been well and truely Americani"z"ed!