andem0n
Post: #1 of 3
Since: 03-10-22

Last post: 980 days
Last view: 973 days
Hello, guys. I'm new in this forum, so I hope I'm not disturbing anyone's peace or the FAQ rules. If so, please let me know and it won't happen again.

I hope some of you are familiarised with this topic, since it was in one of the old posts I've read here. So that's why I registered; to seek help.

The thing is, my auntie came back to my country from living in Japan for some years. She was a bit of a phone-nerd like me when she was young, so she had storaged some Keitai's she had from DoCoMo and Vodafone-SoftBank (Fujitsu F904i - Panasonic P902i - Toshiba 904T). When she came back to my country, she literally gifted them to me because she knows that I'm a phone collector and she made me the happiest 24 yo kid, lmao.
She kept them INTACT as they were back in the day because she knew she wanted to save those pieces of technology she was never used to. She wanted me to sell them and grab a few bucks, but omg they're in unique state and I just want them for myself to maybe upload some stuff, play around with some foreign things I've never had the possibility to try, and of course collect them for more years, haha.
Technologically, the DoCoMo's are INCREDIBLE. But, in the software topic, they're impossible to understand on how to unlock their software to upload music, games, navigate in the internet, etc. Since I'm not a developer nor a hacker nor have the proper knowledge to play around with the coding (?).


For some reason of the world, does there exists someone here with some information - program - software to maybe try to upload like, Java Games to these phones?, maybe software unlock them?. They're old AF, I know, I don't have any expectations about my post here, but please, any kind soul to help me with this?. I could pay you if you have the proper knowledge or just to teach me on how to do this.

Thanks!

P.S: the case with the VODAFONE - SoftBank it's a whole new world. Luckily, that phone was almost like one of my Sony Ericcson's in software-uploading case. Bluetooth file transfer enabled, SIM FREE, Java Games, maybe some pain the butt to upload music and videos, but I don't use it for that purpose. I don't get why the DoCoMo's are so different. How did Japanese people used these things back in the day?, didn't they wanted to upload some stuff from their own pc to their phones and not having to shoot themselves in the anus in the process? ugh, it's annoying.

Okay, hope to get an answer. Kind regards. XO!!!
andem0n
Post: #2 of 3
Since: 03-10-22

Last post: 980 days
Last view: 973 days
Well, yeah, sadly I've just given up to the idea that either I'll have to sell them, or just preserve them like a cute piece of little brick in my house, haha. Damn, luckily that Vodafone-Softbank I had was before SoftBank bought the enterprise and somehow they were like global phones?, but anyway, I literally can upload anything into that phone. It's so fucking sad knowing that if I never have the chance to go to Japan, I will never see how these phones managed back in the day. :(

Thank you for the response. It's amazing that there's still people that cares about this.
andem0n
Post: #3 of 3
Since: 03-10-22

Last post: 980 days
Last view: 973 days
Posted by tomman
Regarding all other features that aren't games/applications on non-smart keitais:

- SMS: Those never were a thing there (only DoCoMo supported those, and only between DoCoMo subscribers) since Japan already had moved on to mobile email by the time they adopted 3G. Forget about those on our western networks!

- Internet (data services): Those are 3G UMTS devices (some may even do 2G GSM, assuming you can still find a compatible working network), which means that they use APNs to provision their network connections. Sadly, APNs are pretty much hardcoded on those devices (from what I've read years ago), so short of firmware hacks (or if you're lucky, access to OEM/SoC-specific confidential phone service software that allows you to mess with NVRAM setup), you can't get any of those phones to access the wireless Internets provided by your non-JP telcos.

- Multimedia: Telcos love lock-in, but Japanese telcos went further ahead and became the only gateway between you and foreign media on your phones. Also, the local copyright cartels (from record labels to JASRAC, the JP's MAFIAA equivalent) are very stingy with regards of electronic formats, and this is why almost no non-smart keitai supports playback of MP3 music (you must use AAC, and there were further restrictions on allowed format of the files themselves). Ringtones were even worse, as you couldn't just use any random piece of music you threw at the phone, no no no no, that's not how things were done in Japan! At least in the case of DoCoMo keitais, ringtones had to be encoded into a proprietary format (for which there was only one encoder tool available to the general public which wasn't free and has a bunch of stupid restrictions, from filesizes to max length, and the format wasn't ever reverse-engineered so forget about FFmpeg and friends). FFS, even Verizon wasn't THAT evil! And don't get me started with videos (hello, arcane file naming schemes!), as that's another can of worms!

- Let's not forget about SoftBank's infamous multimedia lock. Even if you had one of the very rare "factory-unlocked" or "world mode" phones, if yours ran SoftBank firmware, it would LOCK OUT EVERY NON-CORE PHONE FEATURE as soon as it detected a non-SoftBank SIM (or network? Can't remember right now), and the only cure would be to let the phone roam again back in its original network. Total massive bummer, which meant that back then if you wanted to import a keitai, it HAD to be a DoCoMo model. (IIRC that's SoftBank specific - Vodafone JP never did any of that)

- KDDI/au phones are completely useless outside Japan (unless if it is one of the uber-rare "World Wing" 2G GSM-enabled models) because those were CDMA, and used CDMA-specific SIM cards (best known as RUIMs). Even back when CDMA was king in USA, Canada, and Soviet Venezuela, none of our telcos used RUIMs, and even if you went to one of the two other RUIM-enabled networks out there (IIRC those were in China and India), there was simply no way to unlock those phones! Oh, and Japan used those unique special snowflake CDMA frequency bands noone else used in the world...

- OTA DTV ("1-seg") tuners: Only useful on ISDB-T countries (so basically most of Latam excluding Colombia), and even then expect incompatibilities (different codecs and metadata formats, for starters - Latam uses ISDB-Tb, where the "b" is for "Brazil actually improved the goddamned thing for us!")

- Those phones often required SIM hacks as there were no unlock options for those (remember early AT&T iPhones and TurboSIMs?). And once in a while, keitais running under such hacks would completely lose signal, requiring to move the whole SIM hack contraption to a good ol' Western 2G dumbphone to "reanimate" them (the procedure was known as "CPR", dunno if it affected SoftBank or DoCoMo models, but it was a royal pain in the ass for those affected users)

My knowledge of keitais predate 4G/LTE models (no, I never owned one, but I really wanted to! The best flip phone we get here were the RAZRs), or anything released after ~2013 or so, so things may have changed for better, or for worse. And given Japan has pretty much fully embraced the Android/iPhone duopoly, well, I guess their modern offerings must be terrible :/


So let's say that they went into a WHOLE OTHER WORLD, literally, in everything. Why?, I just wonder why they did that?. Also, I wonder if even the japanese people had/has knowledge of how fucking priviledged and advanced they were, and how fucking hateful phone carriers were in making their phones uniquelly for that country.

When I was a child there was a japanese school friend that had a super cool slider japanese phone that was gifted to her by her parents for having good grades and all shit (they were rich af). I remember it had literally everything, but she said she only used it for listening to music and playing in-Japan pre dl games and content from there, as the phone was useless in my country. BUT, she traveled to Japan like whenever she could, so when she arrived there she took the opportunity to download all kind of games, music, and customizations for her phone to not make it a complete useless thing, lol. Damn, the media content from there was weird and also fascinating. And what a nice kid!, she always let me play a lot of cool games with her.
It also had a scrolling ball that illuminnated whenever she rolled it.

That particular model, made me want one so bad. And now I collect shit like this, so it's like a dream came true. But now that I know all of this, I feel like a fucking dinosaur shat on me.

I hope my addiction for Japanese old phones is not a lost cause, since I really believe the phones I have are in really good condition and eventually they'll dissappear completely from any 2nd-hand market. That's when they'll gain value, right? (hope so..)

Fuck, I wonder also if there's ANYONE who managed to hack these phones, or where did they learnt how to do it!.

P.S: Now I own that phone, it was a DoCoMo P-08A in blue sky color. :B
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