The Disney Cell Phones

so did you know that Disney used to have a cell phone network and more than that had custom branded phones to use on that Network yeah I didn't either but when I discovered its existence and found some of these devices for sale online you know I had to buy one and by one I mean four so thanks to a node for sponsoring this episode hello everybody and welcome back to another video yesterday we're going to be diving into the world of Disney mobile the short-lived attempt for Disney to take over the world of mobile communication at least here in the US and you can probably tell that these devices aren't from the US and I'll explain that in a minute but first a little history it all started back in the mid 2000s when Disney decided to take advantage of the rapidly growing cell phone markets they felt they could successfully Market cell phones to kids and by connection their parents Disney mobile was designed to be family oriented parental control functionality was built in which enabled parents to limit usage send Priority messages that would display right when opening the phone and even track the phone's physical location and there were two parts of Disney mobile Veep cell phones themselves which were far less exciting than these Japanese models here they were pretty much generic looking flip phones with a Disney logo slapped on and of course some special software the other part was the carrier in a partnership with Sprint Disney actually became a mobile virtual Network operator or mvno put simply this is a carrier of sorts that doesn't actually have any physical Network infrastructure but instead leases it from one of the major carriers in this case Sprint now there's a ton of these companies around today and there's a good chance that some of you watching have cellular service with them but anyways Disney mobile lasted for a whopping 18 months before it was killed off at the end of 2007. however it wasn't going to go away that easily because around a year later Disney announced that they were going to try the same thing all over again but this time in Japan okay In fairness it wasn't really the same thing at all yes it was an mvno this time using softbanks infrastructure and yes there were Disney branded phones made available the difference was the target audience because you see in Japan Disney is actually pretty popular among young adults especially women between 20 and 30 years old now Disney did not manufacture these phones they were typically re-badged versions of existing models but noticeably more Disney effect than what we got here in the US and let me just show you what I'm talking about so this right here is the very first Disney mobile handset that was released in Japan it's known as the dm-001sh it's manufactured by sharp and it is a rebadged version of the 820 sh just with a bunch of Disney vacation going on so the box here you've got a nice outer sleeve with the Mickey Mouse emblem on it all around the thing you can see on the back here and as you take this off you see this little cutout here slowly changes to basically Mickey and Minnie Mouse meeting and then they fall in love oh isn't that nice so yeah that's that's what's depicted here so yeah this is the inner piece the inner part of the packaging you fold it out here you've got the phone over here we'll get to that in a moment and then over here you have have a bunch of reading material manuals and all sorts of other inserts so we'll go ahead and just set this aside and go through this very briefly this right here is advertising the Disney card club which was a thing in Japan so there's a card advertising that oh isn't that fitting and yeah I'm gonna have to pull out Google Translate for the rest of this stuff here because as I always say in these videos I do not speak or read Japanese so this looks to be the warranty card which gives you some information about the phone's warranty and what it covers and you're apparently supposed to write your name and telephone number in here and then the date of purchase and then this right here is apparently a stamp from the store but it was purchased at and I'm trying to figure out this here because this looks like a date code to me the 21st of November 2022 which seems I mean there's no way this thing was sitting in this box for that long and it was just purchased I don't know maybe it was but maybe I'm just reading that wrong I again I do not speak Japanese so you know I just have to go by Google translate which of course is not a 100 accurate translation this right here it looks like it's talking about this is a soft Bank thing oh it's talking about a service s music connect and S Loop notice of service termination and we'll end on March 31st 2009 so this was apparently a service that they were discontinuing right here you have the service guide all of this stuff is in incredibly great condition very typical for Japanese stuff of course because they tend to take much better care of their things than uh than we do here in the US so in here we can get some Snippets of the user interface which is nice actually because unfortunately I cannot power this phone on in fact out of all these phones that I've purchased only one of them or technically two of them they're the same model I'll get to that in a minute only one of these models actually works which I know is unfortunate but at least we can take a look at one of them and trust me I try to get these things working but it just I think there's something wrong with them and look there's Pluto so you've got Disney characters just kind of scattered around in here that's really nice my Disney mobile okay it's talking about the my Disney mobile page I would assume and yeah so there you go right here you have a oh this is like an envelope oh check this out what is this oh look at that they're like postcards in fact yeah it says postcard right up there so that's that's pretty cool so a nice little extra thing that you get included in here and then all this stuff is wrapped in this uh packaging here in this little sleeve looks like there's a CD in here as well this is looking like it's an operations guide I could be wrong about that but that's the best I can get from Google translate and yeah you got your contents here you've got uh okay so it is telling you about the button the center button on the phone here at least I think that's what that is so that is a good sign you've got the charger here telling you how to like plug the phone in you've got uh what's this back here mu music and movies digital TV internet right here is the first step guide emergency numbers customer service use English interface that's uh definitely well it would be useful if we could actually power the thing on now this right here I did not even notice was in here because I didn't really open this thing entirely I just like checked to make sure that you know the phone was in here and stuff off camera but I didn't really go through this stuff in detail but yeah this right here is the utility software uh for you know using this with your computer which is pretty nice it comes in a sleeve here right here you have what looks like some sort of regulatory stuff ah this is talking about we will get to this in a moment I'm not going to spoil that for you but if you uh know about Japanese TV you might know what this is we'll talk about that in a moment and this right here is the full user's guide but yeah there's all of the not super exciting reading material that I do just like to go through I know not everybody likes me to go through it but you know I do I do think it's nice just to kind of give you guys the full like picture of what came with these devices when we look at them so yeah here is the phone itself we will uh fold this back up and we'll set the Box aside and we'll take a look at what we got here so the phone comes with you know the phone it's battery and the battery cover and we can just uh take this out here now the reason why I cannot get this thing to power on is the battery is bloated I don't know how well you can see that but yeah this thing is bloated it does not hold a charge and I cannot power it on and if you notice one thing that is not in this package is the charger I did not have a charger for this and it does not use any sort of like micro USB anything this right here if I haven't already mentioned it is not an Android phone because this actually predates the public release of Android to buy a little bit so yeah this thing does not run Android it runs its own custom UI probably something Java based if I had to guess and yeah so you know here's we can take a look at the inside of the phone here it is a flip phone and the thing looks like it's never been used before I mean it still has which might explain that date on the uh on the slip in there which again seems crazy if this thing was actually like unused for you know however many years that it's been sitting in this package it does kind of explain why the battery is bloated but yeah so there you go you got a nice sticker there on the screen and if you see on the circular pad here you've got the Mickey emblem right there so yeah that's one of the ways that they modified this and kind of Disney effective and of course on the top here you've got the Disney Mickey Mouse emblem as well just all around this phone came in three colors this is shiny silver you also had Sparkle pink and glitter gold so yeah very Disney named colors as well yeah I'm like just realizing this thing might actually be like New Old Stock that is crazy so yeah anyways uh so you know I wasn't able to power the thing on which sucks so I said huh let me go out and try to find the charger for this so I did I purchased the charger imported it from Japan it cost me three times the amount of the the thing what I paid for it to get it shipped here uh and then guess what I plugged the thing in it doesn't work it doesn't power on both with and without the battery installed so I was thinking that okay maybe it needs to have a working battery in the phone for the charger to actually work maybe it can't be powered directly from the wall so I went ahead and tried to purchase a replacement battery for this thing and I couldn't because of a supposed import restriction on importing batteries what is odd about that is there was no problem getting the phone here with the battery because this shipped with the phone it was declared on the Customs label that it had a battery in it and there was no problem with that now I tried a few different proxy services to get a replacement battery shipped to me and what was interesting is some of the listings on Yahoo auctions Japan through these proxy Services were marked as prohibited items but other listings that were selling the same exact thing were not and so I was able to purchase the item through those listings but then once the battery got to the shipping proxy services warehouse and they realized what it was they then emailed me and said oh we can't ship this to you we have to refund you sorry about that so I don't know if it's like the battery has to be combined with a phone or with something else and then it's okay which obviously I mean it was or maybe it's not maybe I wasn't supposed to get any of these phones I don't know but it was declared on the Customs label as having a battery in it and there was no problem but for some reason shipping the battery by itself was an issue so anyways rambling aside the result is unfortunately I can't power this thing on so we just kind of have to like look at it in all of its Glory here I mean yes it is just a re-badged Disney effect Sharp phone but I think they did a pretty nice job but it's definitely lot more appealing to look at than those generic looking US models that we got for Disney mobile here but yeah so this is it and this was the first Disney mobile phone released in Japan let's go ahead and talk about this model right here because this is the other one that I cannot power on this is one of the first not the first but one of the first Disney mobile Android smartphones this thing runs Android 2.3 and it comes to us from the year 2011 and it is another rebadged Sharp phone so it is a touch screen Android phone you see at the top here you've got the Disney mobile branding but it's also a slider phone so it's got a flip out keyboard here you've got again that Disney emblem on the center button there and you can see the screen is cracked which sucks but what sucks even more is you know I can't power this one on either it does charge over micro USB so I was able just to plug this into a wall adapter that I already had but you know it doesn't power on the battery in it seems to be fine it's not bloated or anything but I can't get it to power on with or without the battery installed so I think there's just something wrong with the phone uh most of these phones I mean I got four of these but most of them were kind of just sold as uh untested I mainly just got them for the hardware itself just to demonstrate it for you here but luckily I do have a model that does power on before we get to that though I think it's about time we talked more about today's video sponsor lenode who has continued to provide funding for our Japan related technology Adventures on this channel and they can provide you with the tools you need to scale and deploy applications big and small that's because for the past two decades they've been making cloud computing affordable accessible and simple with their Linux based virtual machines you can host just about anything because if it runs on Linux it runs on lenode and thanks to their predictable no lock-in pricing you'll know exactly what you pay every month and if your hosting needs increase you can easily up your plan to a higher tier in just a few clicks by the end of this year lenode plans to add at least a dozen more data centers around the world all equipped with Enterprise level capabilities like object storage load balancers and kubernetes and as a thank you for watching this video if you sign up for a new lenode account through my link in the video description you'll get a free 60-day hundred dollar credit to give them a test drive so whether you're looking to change providers or if you're a newcomer to cloud computing be sure to check them out and huge thanks again until a node for making this episode possible we have to take a look at this box right here which doesn't even have a phone in it I just bought it because of the design of the box and also for one of the accessories in here that I thought was kind of interesting first the design I mean this just looks kind of terrifying I'm going to be honest with you like if I saw this sitting on a shelf in a phone store uh I just wouldn't know how to feel in all fairness this is the back of the box okay so this is the front here which looks a lot more appealing but like just having Mickey like teleporting through the box and like jumping out at you I don't know I don't know how that makes me feel but whatever so this is uh the sh-05f in silky white this is when Disney also changed uh carrier Partners I believe from SoftBank to docomo or docomo however you pronounce it so let's open it up and see uh everything inside but the phone because that's that's what we have in here so right here you've got a little like thing that tells you about uh some stuff it looks like some apps and some Disney games and whatnot uh yeah so there you go again it's like it's late in here like this not like this they have it laid in like and then we take this off here and we've got this is okay these are all the like you know reading pamphlets and stuff the manual and whatnot but then check this out here okay this is this is the this is what I bought this this listing for and it looks like this is brand new actually or or at least it was just put back in the little packaging sleeve but yeah so this right here you know it looks like a mirror right which I mean it is you know there's there's my hand it is a mirror but when you flip it over to the back and you've got like Mickey's like the bottom half of his body is like holding he's like been cut in half and he's holding he's holding up the mirror and it also you know works as a phone stand as well but like I don't know I just found this and I was like again I just don't really know how to feel about that like they just they just cut Mickey in half and use them as like a you know prop uh for holding up a giant slab that's a that is a mirror and a phone stand so yeah that's what I that's what I bought that for I just had to show it to you I don't know really how to feel about that but anyways okay this here is the f-08d it's another Android phone from 2012 and it was manufactured by Fujitsu we've got the phone here uh or both of them we've got the pink model and the white model these are identical other than just the color and uh we also have a nice stand here which fortunately is not as uh horrifying as the last one so yeah you know it holds the phone right in there and I think it doubles as a charger as well yes it does that through these contacts on the back here which line up with uh those contacts in there which pop out when you uh press the phone down on that so yeah it's a nice charging stand as well let's go ahead and uh Power on the phone here we'll just use the pink model and there it is it's starting up You've Got The docomo Branding there and yeah so you know it looks kind of like a typical Android phone from 2012 of course just with Disney branding this is not a flip out or slider phone of any kind it is strictly a touch screen phone actually this is the phone that I did not change over to English it is in Japanese the other model here I was able to uh go into the settings and uh swap everything over to English which is going to make taking a look at the software much easier uh so yeah we'll just power this one on here now I should say the translation on some of this stuff is not entirely accurate like setting my body yes I definitely want to do that but this is the like getting started screen which I have set to start up every time that the phone starts up it just asks you to log into your Google account and get set up and all that but we can hit the home button there to go to the home screen and so yeah you've got the Mickey clock again Disney you're really big on their branding so you've got a Mickey Mouse style clock you've got the background there which you know matches with the packaging here with the ribbon forming the Mickey Mouse emblem and yeah so you know I actually don't know which version of Android this is currently running again it shipped with Actually I don't even have it written down what version of Android does this have let's go into settings here and find out so we'll hop down to settings we'll scroll down to about phone and let's see Android version 2.3.5 so there you go and while we're in settings let me just connect this thing to my Wi-Fi network that way we can actually use some of the applications that require network connectivity hooray we're online so we can take a look at some of these applications there are a few uh docomo and Disney branded stuff you know docomo being the carrier you've got a bunch of carrier apps in here but this is the Disney category so let's see what this one is um it was giving me a message about having to be on Wi-Fi before so now that we're on Wi-Fi perhaps it will uh do something an error has occurred please try again so perhaps this was trying to reach out to the network for I don't know something and maybe that server is non-existent anymore because we get that same message every single time we start it up but yeah this right here looks like a media player this is asking me if I'd like to update it to the latest version let's say cancel okay maybe we have to okay there is a problem parsing the package that's not good all right well that's unfortunate Disney weather can we at least look at the weather I kind of want to see how Disney did this oh no we got that same error message yeah that's the same one with the same error code ba-026 that we got on the first app here so I'm guessing that the servers that you know hosted all the content for some let's hope not all of these apps but maybe uh maybe all of them are just not even going to work anymore does the same thing parse error gosh that is annoying I think this is the camera application so maybe this one will no it does the same thing but doesn't that say camera it says Disney photos so perhaps it's like reaching out to a Disney service to like download photos or something like that and this is the Disney markets which I think is also complaining about uh a server error a communication error has occurred lovely so uh yeah unfortunately we can't actually take a look at any of the Disney apps in here which sucks but yeah with it being an Android Droid phone you've got your typical Google stuff in here if we scroll over to the basic category so you've got Gmail Google search Google talk even gosh that really dates this you've got the Android market which will probably yell at us to log in no I don't want to log into the Google account um and yeah so we can go to Google Search here and I don't know maybe try to oh yeah we gotta navigate using this keyboard um there was a way when I was entering my Wi-Fi password I could change it to like a qwerty keyboard layout but that option is not here because like that's not it this doesn't no that's not it um oh yeah this is this is kind of uh I mean we can switch to there and then go uh oh I I entered that in my mistake so I can search for my YouTube channel here and yeah it can they can kind of display the page at least let's try to go to Twitter it's probably gonna have problems loading this yep got a data connectivity problem secure connection cannot be established I'm sure it's probably with the https but yeah web browsing on a 10 plus year old phone I mean what can you expect uh so yeah you've got you know a bunch of apps in here A bunch of carrier stuff as I already mentioned and the really cool thing and the thing that I started to mention earlier but I decided to just save for later on in the video is the TV app now you say wait a second TV do you mean like you know you can stream TV no no no no no no no no we're not talking about streaming TV over the network not at all because my friends you know what these phones have built into them they've got check this out that's right we've got an aerial antenna built right into the phone and it spins look at this go go gadget copta this is just the gift that keeps on giving yeah total actions moment that was immediately when I because I saw in the listing this is what I saw uh for like the first photo and I was like oh my gosh I need to buy this just because of that that is so freaking hilarious that there was actually a TV antenna built into the phone and I know I know before the one guy's gonna completely take the piss out of it in the comments and go well actually the reason why I'm getting to that just give me a moment okay please uh yes the reason why that these phones have antennas and I do mean these phones because all of them like this model right here we've got the antenna right here on the side so you can uh pop this out if I can actually pop it out there we go so you've got an antenna here it folds right in and nicely goes into the phone and even on this one it's actually done a lot nicer on this one because it kind of looks like a port cover but no this is the antenna so you just take it off there pull it out and there you go you can uh you can get a TV signal and watch TV right on your phone which I think is uh is pretty awesome now uh this is made possible because of the way that Japan's uh television broadcasting system works now I'm going to summarize this as quickly as I can here because I could probably do a whole dedicated video on it because I do find this rather fascinating but Japan and a few other countries the way they transmit TV signals is they uh they divide each channel into 13 segments and a standard HDTV broadcast utilizes 12 of those segments leaving one free and that one segment is used to broadcast a special signal intended specifically for mobile devices and it's known as the one seg signal these are one seg antennas on these phones and you won't just find these antennas on mobile phones you can watch TV on your PSP or even your Nintendo DS if you have the antenna accessory that was sold as an official accessory by Nintendo and Sony now it's not the highest picture quality you could probably guess that this is qga 320 by 240 resolution but it works and you could just you know go to wherever you pick up a good signal pop out your antenna which let me let me do that here you gotta pop out the antenna get it set up and obviously it goes without saying that there are far better ways to consume content on mobile devices these days but I just find this like really cool I mean because back when these phones were brand new I mean this was a way of consuming content watching TV on your mobile device yes it looks absolutely hilarious that it has a freaking TV antenna but there was a practical reason for it and the really cool thing is I found this video from another YouTuber where he demoed in two separate videos the PSP and the Nintendo DS1 seg antennas and apparently he got some comments from people that said they still use these things in the modern day to watch TV in that glorious 320 by 240 resolution at like 15 frames per second so it sounds like these signals are still broadcasted today which if I ever go to Japan you bet I'm bringing one of these phones along with me we're going to try that out on a video because that would be pretty cool to uh just to demonstrate so yeah that is uh the that is my favorite part of these phones uh hands down but let's maybe take a look at some of the widgets on here I've not really gone into this let's see if we have any Disney stuff so we've got Disney weather um oh that's the clock okay let's do the weather one here it's telling us that we have to set the region but when we do that it gives us the same error message so yeah I I assume that these widgets are probably not uh going to really work and I wonder if there are like some wallpapers or anything let's see if we can see any other wallpapers in here let's go to the gallery there are no items in your collection okay uh how about we got the gallery and the wallpaper Gallery as well as live wallpapers and wallpaper let's go to wallpapers okay so here's the Disney ones yeah you got a few of them here pretty nice looking there's the one we already have applied and then these just look like standard photos that probably came with the non-disney Branded version of this phone so you can maybe set it to let's go with this one here let's see what's under live wallpapers oh so you do have some Disney ones you've got Disney electrical light parade and Disney pink glitter let's get the Disney electrical light parade going on oh that's really cool look at that oh and it changes as you like go oh yeah you're changing your like perspective as you go around that's really cool look at that but let's apply the other one definitely not as exciting as the other one at least in my opinion but it is a nice animated wallpaper there we go so there's that one and are there any other wallpapers let's see live wallpapers Galaxy these are just kind of generic ones that are not Disney branded and what was the last category wallpaper Gallery which we've got a whole nother list of wallpapers in here too so there you go oh and look at that as you oh that's pretty cool yeah you got some nice effects going on here yeah there you have it guys that is or those are I should say the uh four Disney phones that I purchased from Japan definitely some cool stuff uh I like I said it does suck that we can't power these two devices on I would have loved to take a look at the software on them but perhaps if I ever make it to Japan one day maybe I could try to Source a battery for one of these things or find a you know similar model of battery here in the US to to get and see if maybe the phone does indeed work but it just needs a battery uh in its you know while it's plugged in for it to work but yeah anyways I hope you guys enjoyed this video if you did be sure to give it a thumbs up get subscribed all that good stuff and as always I want to thank you all so much for watching and I will see you in the next video [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Michael MJD

Views: 764,247

Keywords: video, michaelmjd, mjd7999, game, review, overview, apple, microsoft, unboxing, tutorial, windows, how-to, mac, os, operation, system

Id: i9Q_gwPDigU

Length: 28min 26sec (1706 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023