Yesterday, I went to the local Docomo shop to ask a question when a pimple faced girl asks me if I have time to test out the P702iD and answer a questionaire. The phone has an application called Feel*Talk that analyzes your voice. It detects the changes in levels, your tones etc and determines what your mood during the conversation was. After you hang up, a flash animation of a stick man appears on the screen acting out what your mood was. There are 45 different animations. I heard about this feature but hadn’t actually seen it.
So the girl calls up some guy and hands me the phone. A guy on the other end asks me if I have any questions about the Feel*Talk feature. So I ask him why the application detects my mood and not the person I’m calling. I mean I already know what mood I’m in but what I want to know is the mood on the other end. Like if I called a girl to ask her for a date I’d like to know if she was happy or not. Or if I was asking someone a question could I detect if he/she was lying? THAT would be useful. The guy explains that that would have some moral implications and would cause problems. Docomo didn’t want to get sued. OK makes sense but they should at least offer a hack to switch it. I also asked him why the character animation is a man and why they didn’t have a option to switch it to a woman, for which he did not have an answer. Seems like an easy thing to do technically.
After hanging up, the animation came up on the screen. Very smooth and fun to watch. The mood was anger. Hmmm..pretty accurate! I was a bit aggressive when expressing my opinions. I was given this brochure and mini Dorayaki for my work. The P702iD is small and block shaped like all the other phones, but this feature seems like it would be a lot of fun. Too bad it doesn’t have a Felica chip in it.
Even though you already pretty much know your own mood, if it’s accurate it could serve as a sort of alert that your message might not have come through the way you wanted to, or something like that. Like maybe you should have taken it a bit easier on the poor tech guy. :)
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I sometimes sound irritated and cynical when I’m not. It might be a good way to keep that in check.
I had the same impression as Patrick. I guess it was because you said you asked the guy, “Why can’t it do this and that?” vs. “How does this and that work?” Man you’re vicious! ;)
I personally think this whole mood thing is just a marketing ploy to get people to buy the phone.
It seems entertaining and all that they have this stuff in Japan but they seem to never do stuff like this here in the US.
Well of course these applications are there to get people to buy the phones.
There are so many handsets competing for attention manufacturers are always looking for something to set theirs apart from the rest.