NTT DoCoMo has announced this week the launch of Xi, the first LTE (Long Term Evolution) data service in Japan.
The carrier will begin the rollout on December 24th.
Xi should offer download speeds as high as 75 Mbps, ten times faster than the carrier’s current FOMA 3G.
While it will not immediately be available for smartphone owners, the company will start selling USB dongles in December that will allow computers to connect to the lightning fast data service.
Phones with Xi support will start shipping in April, 2011.
Initial cities to have the service are Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka.
DoCoMo will offer two billing plans, each with contract. The first is for up to 5GB per cycle, but pricing is unavailable. The unlimited plan will cost 4935 yen, or about $60 USD.
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The Japanese cellphone carrier NTT DoCoMo has suspended all sales of the popular RIM BlackBerry Bold due to overheating problems reported by over 30 users.
The overheating occurs during charging of the smartphone, and RIM says that one percent of all the phones sold in Japan experienced the overheating. RIM did say however that “temperatures remained within regulatory standards.”
“Although RIM’s analysis of the devices in question has allowed it to rule out a battery problem, the root cause remains under investigation,” read RIM’s statement.
There are over 21 million BlackBerry users globally.
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Apple has been sued again over their hugely popular iPhone, this time over the screen rendering technology used in both the iPhone and the iPod Touch.
The suit, brought forward by Picsel Technologies, alleges that the rendering process is in clear violation of Piscel’s patents. Picsel added the “technology accelerates the process of updating the display on a device.”
Lawyers for the company said iPhone users “would experience long screen update delays if it weren’t for the use of the patented technology. Zooming and panning documents, Web sites, and images would not work on the iPhone as fluidly.”
Picsel adds that its technology is featured in hundreds of different gadgets and counts KDDI, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Palm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Sharp as past and current customers.
