The Mysteries of Japan-Only Phones – How Japan developed its unique ecosystem of cellphone in the early 2000s

7 comments

1. Oh, I was just talking about this yesterday.

2. I always thought [the phone from Eden of the East (Higashi no Eden)](https://www.itmedia.co.jp/mobile/spv/0905/21/news035.html) was going to be the “next gen” flip phone in that era, since it was designed by NEC

3. I remember my first “candy bar” (shape) phone in 1994. One charge would last about 2 weeks and it had Space Invaders.

4. They were more advanced than the rest of the world but unfortunately too clueless to export them.

   And during that time Nokia was making bank selling their BW screen phones with 4 lines of text all over the world.

   The “features” they had today have large appeal: taking pictures to send them by short message, emojis (to the point the Japanese word became the international word), web sites that people actually used… They were absolutely not features that only made sense in Japan.

   It’s sad that they failed to export them, then during the smartphone era failed to recognized that hardware no longer matters and software was the real differentiator.

5. I actually miss garakei. They are durable, battery efficient and do everything you need them to do. In addition they did not get viruses and malware. Superior phones.

6. Anyone else here old enough to remember “phone sex” (swapping contact info) using infrared communication/赤外線?

7. I miss my pokeberu…