Fujitsu’s RakuRaku phone, for adults who’ve given up
After talking about Samsung's Disney phones for kids, time now to look at the other end of the spectrum, in the form of the Fujitsu RakuRaku phone, designed for people who's advanced age has rendered the complexities of the modern-day mobile phone beyond them (i.e. aynone over the age of 20!)
Raku is Japanese for Easy, so the Fujitsu EasyEasy phone is obviously designed to be as easy to use as possible. Given this, you'd expect the Raku to offer nothing more than the ability to make and receive calls, and possibly to receive a text or two, but you'd be wrong - the Raku is a full-specced Japanese phone that features GPS, a digital camera, and even photo display correction software.
More details, and a bit of a rant, after the jump!
How, you might be asking, have Fujitsu managed to make the Raku so allegedly easy to use? Simple - they've gone for the pen-based bar scanner approach.
Drawing on technology that some old VHS video recorders of last century used to use, a bar scanner can be connected to the Raku, and then swiped over a series of images that depict the action that the user wants the phone to do.
For example, sending an email is as simple (or as Raku - see what I did there? ;) as swiping the pen (called, for some odd reason, the Grid Onput) over a picture of an email. Of course, you first have to write your email, but this is made Raku as well. Don't bother trying to type on the phone's keypad - simply get your bar scanning book out, turn to the page marked "alphabet", and swipe the pen over the letters you want to type!
Simple, easy, and very very Raku. Sure, it'll take you ages to type your email, and yes of course it'll be annoying bringing along a book of icons with you wherever you go just to be able to use your mobile phone, but hey - it's still Raku, right?!
I can see this phone selling by the dozen...actually, by a dozen. Yes, twelve phones, that's all they'll sell, and to the same people who buy those miracle kitchen gadgets that are designed to make your life so much Rakuier, but which never ever work! Yeesh!
Akihabara News]
