Japanese cellphones

[Hiroyuki kun]

Hey everyone,

I've been wondering about the types of cellphones you get in Japan because apparently the GSM cellphones from the rest of the world will not operate on the Japanese network. Also let me know the names of the different networks available in Japan.

I think it would also be fun to download some Japanese content, operator logo, wallpapers etc. onto my current cellphone, so if anyone knows some good sites for this, PM me.

ありがとうございます。

[chikara]

This thread on Cell Phones in Japan answers some of your questions.

You could also read the Japanese Cellular Phones FAQ

Edit: Add second link

[keatonatron]

The main cell companies are DoCoMo (NTT), Au, and Vodafone (British company). The Japanese phones are much more advanced than phones in other countries, and I believe the cell phone system that they use in Japan provides for a lot more bandwidth/speed than GSM. They have recently developed cell phones that can browse the internet with broadband speeds, all over the cell phone connection.

[two_heads_talking]

I know that my Japanese friends here in the states complain that they can't do anything with their phones when they are connected to our cell companies. most will pay the extra money to stay on their own sattelite companies just to be able to use their phones..

I wonder why the technology hasn't crossed outside of Japan yet?

[LordOfTheFlies]

two_heads_talking wrote:
I know that my Japanese friends here in the states complain that they can't do anything with their phones when they are connected to our cell companies. most will pay the extra money to stay on their own sattelite companies just to be able to use their phones..

I wonder why the technology hasn't crossed outside of Japan yet?

Like Keatonatron said... They use a different kind of cell phones that use alot more bandwidth than the regular GSM cell phone. And the problem isn't that the technology doesn't exist in the US... It's just that it would be pretty much impossible to cover up such a large country with high speed wireless networks. Japan is geographically small, thus it is possible for them, plus they were most likely the pioneers in this technology.

We have a similiar thing here in Sweden called 3G, it operates at around 1 or 2 mbit/s downstream and like 0.5 mbit/s upstream... It's not like many use it though, I think it's pretty pointless except for video conversations, which is pretty cool.

[Tspoonami]

I have a free cell phone with a ten-dollar-per-month plan... I keep it turned off 75% of the time, and when it is on, I don't even really use it. I am happy, though... Cell phones are a hassle when you don't need them, but convenient when you do.

I hate having a cell phone in my pocket; that's where my hand goes!

[Harisenbon]

The main cell companies are DoCoMo (NTT), Au, and Vodafone (British company).

Just a nitpick. Vodafone got kicked out for Softbank from the start of this month.
(that company doesn't have a good track record. 3 years ago Vodaphone was J-Phone)

[BetterSense]

This summer a kid at my internship was telling me about the stellar service in Japan, and he had a cellphone that had japanese on it. Tell you what, typing japanese on the thing was much slicker than I would have thought.

[Harisenbon]

Tell you what, typing japanese on the thing was much slicker than I would have thought.

Because of the speed difference between typing in Japanese and English on my cellphone, I almost never write in English. People who mail me in English usually either a) get responses in Japanese or b) get ignored until I have enough time to hunt and peck out a message.

[two_heads_talking]

so we have a special one for Japan, one for China, one for Sweden etc.. sounds to me like a whole bunch of people don't want to get together and do what we did with the internet. make it all one system and universally accesible. that was the point of my question. Small or otherwise is irrelevant in society today. It seems to me that The Americas are either way slow on this or want to stay in their current monopoly and are being passed up in leaps and bounds on this technological front.

[Tspoonami]

Harisenbon wrote:Because of the speed difference between typing in Japanese and English on my cellphone, I almost never write in English.

Why is it faster? I'm just curious...

[Infidel]

probably because the quick text matching feature of his phone doesn't work for English.

[Harisenbon]

Tspoonami wrote:

Harisenbon wrote:Because of the speed difference between typing in Japanese and English on my cellphone, I almost never write in English.

Why is it faster? I'm just curious...

I just counted out the number of key presses, and they're about the same, but the speed difference is still pretty big. I can write a full page mail in Japanese in about 20 seconds, while an english one takes me about 2 minutes. I:m wondering if it's just because of the way the kana is organized. Because you have 1 button for each kana row （あ、か、さ、た等） and you press it multiple times to get each character in the row (あいうえお） you end up pushing the more buttons, but you don't move around the key pad as much as with English.

Also, Japanese is just a more compact language in a lot of cases.

For example, for the word apple / りんご I have to do
apple 2-7->-7-5-5-5-3-3 (9 presses, 6 key changes)
りんご 9-9-0-2-2-2-2-2-# (9 presses, 4 key changes)

let's hangout / あそぼう
(I think this is obvious which will win)

And word complete works in both English and Japanese, so that doesn't have anything to do with the speed.


I can't believe I spent that much time thinking about this. :/

[spin13]

You can further speed up Japanese input by using the 2-touch input method. [1] represents [あ　い　う　え　お], with [1][2] being [あ] and [1][2] being [い], and so on. Add to this a handy auto-complete function for recently/commonly typed words and writing emails in Japanese is much, much faster than in English.

Or maybe my phone just sucks and only has these features for Japanese and not for English. I don't really know, but I also don't really care.

And I don't know about Docomo or AU, but Vodafone/Softbank uses the 3G network, which I assume is the same as the aforementioned network in Sweden. Probably because it is/was a European company. I don't pay attention to what the company does, as long as my bill doesn't increase and I get my calls from work.

-Eric

[Matsumoto_hideto]

I have a prepaid phone I bought from softbank for about １万円 that was the phone and a ３千円Telephone card. Its actually really cool although it sucks in comparision to normal japanese cellphones. Ive seen ppl stream live TV with their phones b4 its crazyyyyy.