Fujitsu delivers Japanese old fart's fone

A NEW addition to Japan's NTT DoCoMo's Raku-Raku range, the Phone IV from Fujitsu, has officially shipped today. Raku loosely translated means comfortable or easy.

But to us Westerners, a Raku-Raku is mobile handset deliberately designed to appeal to the senior citizen whose eyesight and hearing are beginning to fail. So that's Old Farts, then.

In order to help out the older citizen, the handset features noise reduction to improve the clarity of the call and sound levelling to improve what the other party hears.

This handset is claimed to be the first in its genre to actually have a GPS receiver built-in along with associated mapping software. So if you've forgotten where you are, then you can find out.

There's also an intriguing scanner facility which enables the user to create emails without having to touch the keypad. Which is great considering the complexity of Japanese Kanji scripts.

Although this is yet another Symbian based phone, its chances of shipping outside Fujitsu's home market look very slim indeed.µ