Only 13,000 units will be made, which is a good sign that even the Japanese know this thing is too crazy to be put into full production. [Akihabara News]

He's actually controlling an MP3 planer with his eyes.

There's no camera involved here, no optical recognition of any kind. The two earphones inside his ears—developed by NTT DoCoMo—can detect the eye movement using electrodes so sensitive that they can detect how his eyes move—just by being in contact with his head.

I don't know about you, but I think that's quite wicked. I may end up with a huge headache, but it's cool nonetheless. [Pink Tentacle]

The phone, composed of screen half and number-pad half, can be joined along either edge. But DoCoMo calls this phone "separable," able to be broken apart while staying in contact via Bluetooth, for such activities as:

• Surfing the internet on the screen half while talking on the keypad half

• Watching movies on the screen half while using the keypad as a remote

• Strapping the screen to your wrist as an MP3 player, while leaving the keypad in your pocket or bag

• Sticking the vibrating part down the pants of you or a loved one while... Okay, I admit, I'm making this last one up, but you see how the whole separation thing gets absurd in a hurry, and that's coming from a guy who thought the phone that has its own detachable Bluetooth earpiece was one of the best products of 2008. Nice find, Charlie. [Wired]

Since most popular keyless entry systems depend on radio raves (and have since the early 2000's, when they first rose to prominence) and likely won't be using the phone's includes radio, this pairing is less of a technological integration than a lets-strap-another-piece-of-hardware-on-a-phone. In any case, hackers, the obscenely rich and the Chinese have been doing stuff like this for a while now, so it's about time that this obvious path for convergence was taken. [NTT Docomo]

The pack then notifies you when it's time to recharge, when it needs repairs or even when it's time for a replacement. Information is stored on the battery itself, so that even if you change your phone, you can still view your pack's previously recorded data.

NTT DoCoMo says that keeping close track of deterioration in the battery pack is a great way to prevent the Li-ions from catching fire or exploding—a problem that has only increased as the need for more portable power continues to swell. The new brand of intelligent batteries will be found on phone models coming out next year. [Techon]

In the demo, unveiled at the Izutuya deparment store in Kitakyushu, Japan, a sick grandmother went shopping with her granddaughter using the robot and a video-capable cellphone. Girl and bot sauntered to the hat section, shuffled through what was available, and picked out one to purchase.

So what about this makes it better than having your granddaughter surf Internet clothes outlets with you back at home? Being the kind of person that abhors shopping at malls, I really have no clue. Tmsuk, however, is convinced that its “3D communications” technology will soon have telerobotic machines wandering around all the world's fashion capitals. [Pink Tentacle]

The music player in its current form is a humongoid set of headphones that can do things like adjust the volume based on what direction you roll your eyes, or change the track by moving your eyes from side to side. The telephone is a ball-shaped ring that sits on your finger and uses bone conduction to transmit the sound of the caller to your ear. And theyre also working on a wristwatch that can interpret taps between the thumb and forefinger as remote control commands, like a modern day Morse code. But this is all R&D stuff, of course. Don't expect it in stores anytime soon. [AP]

E-paper works slightly differently than Sony Reader's e-ink, which has black and white balls of opposite charges, floating in a clear liquid, which change position when polarity changes. Here, the particles are just white, and are suspended in a colored liquid, floating up when needed. Engineers have come up with five e-paper colors—blue, red, green, yellow and black—and the prototype plastic bodies are meant to correspond with those colors. It takes about one second for the display character to change.
There doesn't appear to be any kind of a backlight, so you may have to carry your own Itty Bitty Book Light around to see what buttons you are pushing, which sort of defeats the purpose of having hard keys. There doesn't appear to be a halitosis monitor either, but surely that will come in time. [Nikkei]

For one thing, the Japanese experimenters are using four multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas at the same time on both the transmission and receiving side. But this is not something people are using to download HD videos to their cellphones today. The company says its development process will probably be complete by 2009. And from the looks of that diagram above, you'll need some serious paraphernalia on the sending and receiving side to use this tech, deskside units that don't exactly look like mobile phones.

Now all these NTT dudes have to do is figure out how to shoehorn all that big iron into a container the size of a thimble. [Unwired View]

At least, that's what NTT DoCoMo says. To me, with its dual camera and video-conferencing functions, this 17.6mm-thick 3G slider doesn't look simpler than other phones. Why and full features after the jump.

Simpure L2 Handset Features

Size: 98 x 48 x 17.6 mm
Weight: 110 grams
Stand-by time: 340 hours static and 200 hours dynamic. 260 hours on GSM.
Continuous talk time: 140 minutes
Continuous video calling time: 90 minutes
Main display: 2.2-inch 176 x 220 pixel TFT LCD with 262,144 colors
Cameras: Outside 1.3 megapixel, inside 320,000 pixel
Colors: black, white and gold
Roaming: 3G, GSM and GPRS

While we can't judge the simplicity of the phone by these specs, taking out functions doesn't mean simplifying a cellphone. Make a phone easier to use means rethinking the way the user interacts with it. If you have to access the same list menus and use the same buttons, you will end up with a phone as complicated as the rest but with less features, which is precisely what the Simpure L2 looks like.

Take the other extreme: the iPhone. Whether you like Apple or not, the iPhone packs an amazing amount of functionality in a very tight package, while making its operation obvious to the user by implementing a direct-manipulation interface. Touch me to use me looks like a sexploitation B-movie, but it works. It does a better job on simplifying access to more sophisticated functions because Apple has simplified the interaction and they have made it consistent through the different applications. That's what other manufacturers really (hopefully) have to understand, rather than keeping increasing the complexity of the cellphones and adding never-ending cascading list menus to them.

And yes, I confess I am itching to make the Jesus-phone into the Jesus' Jesus-Phone once it comes out. – Jesus Diaz

Press release [NTT DoCoMo]

Ah NTT DoCoMo, you may have some of the coolest phones on the planet, but looking at this video on how you think the future of communications and cell phone technologies will be, I can only say that:

a) Someone sold you a broken magic crystal ball.
b) You have been drinking too many industrial-grade cleaning products.
c) You hired Conan O'Brien's "In The Year 2000" scriptwriters to write this story of a Japanese family that starts in 2003 and ends in the next decade.
d) That tobacco you bought in Amsterdam during your 2001 school trip was not tobacco.
e) All of the above.

Although the video has just been posted on YouTube, it seems to be a few years old—unless I've missed something and kids now have giant touchscreens in class. However, it has a few interesting gadgets, and it's a tantalizing view of how communications will be Really Soon Now™.

Failing that, it's definitively good Watch-while-you-are-eating-your-Frosties material. The second part of the video is just right after the jump.

–Jesus Diaz

(Video) NTT DoCoMo: The Future of Cell Phones [TechEBlog]

NTT DoCoMo to Display New Handset in Milan [Far East Gizmos]

DoCoMo and McDonalds join hands in Japan [Gearfuse]

And I kept getting a 4. Which means I'm either dead or in a coma. (Or my stank breath killed the machine). Back to the cervezeria. – Louis Ramirez

Excuse me, your phone is smelling... [telephony's wireless review]