Japan’s unique mobile phone features

It seems that Japanese mobile phones by law have a certain feature that is not present in the same phones in other countries …

This was recently reported by Nobuyuki Hayashi, a tech reporter based in Tokyo, when the Apple iPhone 3G was released last year. However the feature has been activated on all mobile phones sold in Japan for a while now.

 

Because of the recent increase in the use of the hi-resolution cameras in mobile phones to take sneaky pictures up women’s skirts (or down their tops) by voyeurs, laws were passed that ALL mobile phones must make a conspicuous ‘shutter’ sound, even the phone is set to ‘silent’ mode – some manufacturers have even made the shutter sound louder.

It doesn’t take much searching on the internet to find that these types of photos are very popular in Japan, and you can even get DVD’s with this type of spy photo taken by concealed video cameras. Japan’s ubiquitous schoolgirls & O.L.’s seem to be the ‘best’ target.

Thanks to Jeff Eppstein, here is an upskirt warning poster in a Tokyo subway station – I can’t say I ever saw one of these all the times I have been there !!!

If for some reason you don’t understand what we are talking about here, here are a couple of samples of the types of photo that perverts try to take.