Horas and konnichiwa untuk semua

Here is a Google ad I saw on my gmail page:

BlackBerry®スマートフォン – ap.BlackBerry.com/JPN – ビジネスマンの為のスマートフォン。 世界基準のブラックベリー、販売中 !

It says, “BlackBerry smartphone – ap.BlackBerry.com/JPN – smartphone for businessman. BlackBerry, the World’s standard, on sale.

Deja Vu.. reminds me of Vodafone Japan that uses similar phrases of “world’s standard”. Either RIM is ignorant, or simply very confident it could do better than the now defunct Vodafone Japan. Japanese handset market couldn’t care less about world’s standard, the question is whether BlackBerry supports (it does not) QR code, FeliCa, 1seg TV and other must-have Japanese mobile goodies. “Always connected”, or “push mail” are simply not enough to lure users in Japan to BlackBerry, as those are available on all handsets in Japan, even the stupidest ones.

Some months ago, my SoftBank cellphone was destroyed when I forgot to take it out from my trousers’ pocket and it was washed by the washing machine. It’s time now to get a replacement. I wanted a cellphone that has standard Japanese features (e.g., 1seg, Felica, quality still and video camera), WiFi and is a smartphone. It turned out to be impossible to get all of these in one unit. I was of course interested in the iPhone, but it is so non-Japanese that it would be painful to use it in Japan, so I decided on a HTC Touch Diamond, but when I tried it, I immediately recalled my experience of using a Windows Mobile phone, it was really painful. I was a Windows mobile user twice, first when it was still PocketPC, and then Windows Mobile 5. HTC Touch Diamond uses Windows Mobile 6, but basically nothing has changed, it is still a bad idea. I then reluctantly picked the next choice, the iPhone 3G. Other than that it surprisingly failed to connect to my WiFi router (while the MacBook Pro had no problem at all), it could not connect to the Mac via Bluetooth for file exchange, and no wireless syncing, it was truly a great smartphone. Apple has really done what no other smartphone company could have done so far. I am also a Blackberry user when abroad, about the only thing that I sometimes miss from a Blackberry is its hardware keyboard. It seems that now the only way for faster typing is really using a hardware keyboard. I won’t be surprised if Apple later invent an equivalent for this, but now the software keyboard is no match for hardware keyboard for heavy keyboard use. Anyway, iPhone is really marvelous. I have used different kinds of handsets, iPhone really stands out in term of usability and functionality.

I finally got a conclusion regarding Japanese language support on BlackBerry. It is rumored that BlackBerry 8707v supports Japanese language input with software version 4.2.2. This is supposedly because NTT DoCoMo is using 8707h, a 8707 series for DoCoMo. I got a 8707g but it did not have Japanese language input. I got 4.2.2 software from DoCoMo site but somehow it could not recognize my 8707g. Here are the findings and conclusion I got:

1. 8707g also supports Japanese language (so any letter will seem to work)
2. Japanese language display is supported, though not perfectly as sometimes it shows strange characters, when Chinese software is inluded (this is the condition when I initially got the 8707g, it could display Japanese mails and SMS though sometimes strangely)
3. BlackBerry OS software that is carrier specific only works for BlackBerry from that carrier, though it is said that it would work with any BlackBerry if you remove the VENDOR.XML file*) located at:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Research In Motion\AppLoader\VENDOR.XML
(This seems to be the reason why the DoCoMo specific software does not work with my 8707g, since it is a SingTel version).
4. When I used SingTel specific 4.2.2 (i.e., 8707vCJK_PBr4.2.2_rel302_PL3.4.0.24_A4.2.2.122_SingTel.exe), I immediately got a list of language support, including Japanese language input.

Now it works like a charm!

References:
*)http://www.blackberryforums.com/rim-software/1871-blackberryos-4-x-download-faq-upgrade-downloads.html
Device software can be downloaded here:
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/support/downloads/#tab_tab_desktop

I found a better solution to my previous post. This requires a phone that supports IMAP and IMAP’s IDLE. As always, a Japanese-capable phone is necessary for my case, and this time I resorted to using 702NKII (Vodafone KK’s version of Nokia 6680). Some sites such as this says that built-in email application on S60 phones could not retrieve email from Gmail for lack of support of SSL, but it’s not true, at least for this Nokia 6680. Here are the steps toward a better poor man’s blackberry:

1. Create a Gmail account dedicated for this purpose
This is necessary since I have gigabytes of mails on my Gmail account and it seems that as is with Thunderbird this Nokia 6680 will try to get headers of all of these mails… So I created a dedicated address and I am going to forward only necessary mails and I am going to delete frequently.

2. Set up email client on Nokia 6680
Go to “Messages” then create a new mailbox. On Mailbox settings, set the access point to the one known to work (in my case I am already able to access Gmail via Java client using Indosat Matrix access point so I am using this), set “My e-mail address” to the address created above, set outgoing mail server to “smtp.gmail.com”, set “User name” to the mail address created above, set “Incoming mail server” to “imap.gmail.com” and “Mailbox type” to “IMAP4″, set “Security (ports)” to “On (993/995)”, and set the rest appropriately. On “Automatic retrieval”, set “Header retrieval” to “Always on”, set “Retrieval interval” to “Every 5 minutes” to get the effect of push mail, and set other parts as prefered.

That’s it. I have tried and the phone plays the sound to notify new mail a few minutes after I sent mail to the above gmail address. I didn’t do much testing because I am using Matrix’s GPRS on international roaming…

Almost any recent cellular phone in Japan has all that Blackberry has and much more, minus one (i.e., integration with corporate Exchange server, but this is available as optional service). But when traveling outside Japan while needing to read and responds in Japanese, all I have is poor man’s Blackberry, and it took me years to come to this point. Here is how to “make” one:1. Make sure GPRS settings are correct and GPRS is activated by the operator for your subscription.2. You need to be able to use procmail to forward your emails, and has web-based sms sending service subscription that is cheap enough to warrant the name “poor”;)3. Use a standard Japanese-capable handset (assuming that, like me, you need to deal with Japanese mails).4. Get Gmail account.5. Download mobile Gmail application from the following URL and install.http://gmail.com/appNow you are set to receive and send email like with any cell phone in Japan.6. Get real time notification of email arrival using SMS, by setting up a procmail recipe and perl script as follows::0 c* ^From:*\/.* |./sendsms.pl $MATCHThe “sendsms.pl” called above could be like this:

#!/usr/bin/perluse LWP::UserAgent;my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;$ua->timeout(10);$ua->agent('Mozilla');my $argc = @ARGV;my $from;my $subject;if ($argc>0) { $from = $ARGV[0]; } else { $from = "uknown"; }#if ($argc>1) { $subject = $ARGV[1]; }my $smsbody = "Mail from $from: $subject";my $posturl = "https://theurltowebbasedsms";my $req = HTTP::Request->new(POST => $posturl);my $res = $ua->request($req);

So whenever an email arrived, the procmail recipe above will get the sender’s information (From: field) and pass it to the perl script, which will send it as sms via web interface to my cell phone7. Voila, the poor man’s blackberry is now ready to tell you in real time that an email has arrived (at Gmail’s email server) and ready to be read (via Gmail’s Java application;).