Thursday, October 30, 2008

SoftBank iPhone Announcement: Free Wifi, watch TV with iPhone, and emoticons in Japan by the end of 2008

In the announcement of SoftBank regarding the new line up of cell phones for winter, they also made some exciting ones for Japanese iPhone users. Here are the announcmenets.

  1. Free wifi for iPhone users at about 3,500 locations (McDonald’s, train stations, airport, and etc.)

  2. An external unit that serves as a mobile digital TV receiver and battery. This is seen in the following image. As you can see, the design is surely inspired by the iPhone itself, but it’s not availble in white! 



    What’s neat is that if you just want to watch TV, you do not need to hook the device to the iPhone. The unit pairs up with the iPhone, and transfers the TV contents via wifi to a TV app, which will be provided by SoftBank for free.

    This will be available in December for about 10,000 yen (about $100). I personally need the battery over the TV function, but it’s nice to have the TV function just in case. 

    This is definitely a creative way to enable watching TV on iPhone.  I think we're going to see other TV tuner products like this soon in other countries using a similar concept.  

  3. As rumors have already circulated, within this year, the iPhone will support emoji (the Japanese word for emoticons). 
It seems SoftBank is definitely listening to its consumers in Japan.   Well, I'll probably get the the TV / Battery pack.  

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