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3G iPhone in Japan?
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keirnna
macrumors regular
So it turns out I payed 80,640円 down for this phone and then I get a ~1,900円 a month discount on my plan. I think that is pretty crappy, but oh well. I guess they considered me a flight risk. The funny thing is I totally missed this until my wife re-read the paperwork and gave me a bit of an ass chewing.
Who else is pissed that the 3G doesn't come with a dock?
Who else is pissed that the 3G doesn't come with a dock?
mavis
macrumors 601
Pissed? No - but I'm annoyed. 😉
Oh, BTW - I think I've sorted out my problem! It seems that one of the dozen or so apps I had downloaded was somehow corrupt - once I deleted them all from my Mac, and restored the iPhone (#11) I was able to use the App Store on the iPhone itself., for the first time ever. I'm going back through and downloading all of the apps I bought - some on the iPhone and some on the Mac, and I've yet to get a hard lockup. I can't believe it - I FINALLY have a working iPhone! 😱
I'm so happy right now. 😀
xenohawk
macrumors member
If it makes it cheaper then no 🙄
I think the dock will not be compatible with case out there and I ain't going to carry it out naked hehe. The white + tuneware clear silicon case + anti-glare front screen protector = cool rugged iphone + smudge free!
Glad to hear that you solved your problem and its not an issues anymore. Now I can start buying apps 🙂
Btw, how long does your iPhone battery last? It only lasted me until night and I'm at 10%. Probably because I used the 3G, GPS, YouTube, and iPod for hours 😛. I hope someone come out with a external battery charger like the ones they have for normal japanese phones.
yeah I am not happy about missing dock as well... In my pretty short experience iPhone gets dischrged pretty fast and charging from a computers USB is several times slower comparing to plugging the same USB cable into the supplied power adapter.
Going to spend another 3400 yen for the now optional dock.
Other than that, iPhone is a dream came true for me. Now I only need a ssh/terminal application to appear in appstore so I can control my servers on the road...
By the way gps didn't work for me as well but I solved it by turnun off auto lock and then launching the map application and leaving the phone right in the middle of my little home garden . When I came back to check in about 5-10 mins, I had the blue gps dot pulsating on me 🙂 everything was working fast since then. Probably iPhone needs to fetch some settings from space the first time you run gps ...
Typing this on by iPhone btw!! Absolutely stunning device!!
xenohawk
macrumors member
Ouch.. didn't know that. I thought all USB are standard 5 Watt output.
Now, that explained why my GPS didn't work when I went to Akihabara but it worked instantly at home. Maybe iPhone saved the locked satellite location?
mavis
macrumors 601
Glad to hear we're all sorted out now. 😀
BTW, you should point your iPhone here:
http://mobile.macrumors.com
It's MUCH faster ... 😉
mavis
macrumors 601
Just a word of advice - the app that seems to have been the culprit in my 11-restore spree was "the WISDOM English-Japanese Dictionary" (link) which also happened to be my most expensive (and useful) purchase. Figures. Anyway I went through and re-installed all of my apps one by one, alternating between installing directly to the iPhone and installing via iTunes - they all worked perfectly, except for that one. Once it was installed, I was unable to install anything else using the App Store on my iPhone (and narrowly dodged my twelfth restore by quickly removing it after a near-freeze) ... 🙄
Just thought I'd toss that out there. I've requested a refund through iTMS support but I don't know how far I'll get without having to turn up the volume a bit - when I submitted my request, a page popped up informing me that I would have to take up support issues with the app's developer. So, we'll see how that goes. I'm just THRILLED that I finally have a working iPhone. This thing is VERY cool, I couldn't be happier!!!! 😀
xenohawk
macrumors member
Thanks for the heads-up mave, I was really close to getting it but give it a second thought about the price. I hope there are some web apps that do this for free 😛 , this phone is blazing fast on the internet compare to my old phone which can't even view most of the website.
Btw, how did you guys move the address from the old phone to iPhone? I tried to used the software that came with my iPhone purchased (メモタツ？) but can't really run it since I am on English Windows XP.
I finally know what to do with my old phone. It is a really good alarm clock.
sushi
Moderator emeritus
Thanks. Doing a quick comparison, that would save me about 2,000 yen per month.
Thanks for the heads up.
I was going to suggest that it might be a corrupted app, or one that is not playing with others correctly.
Anyhow, glad to hear that you are up an running. 🙂
It sounds like things are working well for you now. Any other tidbits you would like to share?
keirnna
macrumors regular
Yeah I know the double white plan will work out well for me since I only know iPhone friends and one other guy with softbank. Everyone uses DoCoMo except for a few losers on AU.
mavis
macrumors 601
Actually, there is one thing. Some people have reported (and I can verify) that the Contacts app is really laggy when first launched - on my iPhone, it takes several seconds to become responsive. But I've found that the Phone.app's contact list can be used immediately after opening. As a former Touch user, I'm accustomed to using the standalone contacts app, so its sluggishness really bugged me - for owners of the old iPhone, they probably haven't even noticed as they're used to opening up the phone app for contacts.
Whatever. Just thought I'd mention it. Stick to the phone app to access your contacts, at least until Apple fixes the standalone app. 😉
I went past the Omotesando store again, and still a line of people waiting outside. but thats to enter the store and try out the iphone, there's no other way in to ask questions.
went to the Softbank in Shibuya, but i didnt understand the chap very well. and he didn't want to go through the whole price plan as they are out of stock. ehh...what customer service?.
Run down of my current situation:
contract: expires March 2009. (been wth VF/SB for 3.5years)
Plan: white plan + 580yen/month for the phone + 300yen for email service
Visa: have alittle over 2 years left.
If i was to upgrade in the next 1-2months time. what would I be up for?.
appreciate if someone could give me and others a quick run down of the costs we are expected to pay. There seems to be a bit of confusion in here especially with keirnna having to pay 80,000 up front. thats 80,000 that would go better in my bank account than in theirs.
went to the Softbank in Shibuya, but i didnt understand the chap very well. and he didn't want to go through the whole price plan as they are out of stock. ehh...what customer service?.
Run down of my current situation:
contract: expires March 2009. (been wth VF/SB for 3.5years)
Plan: white plan + 580yen/month for the phone + 300yen for email service
Visa: have alittle over 2 years left.
If i was to upgrade in the next 1-2months time. what would I be up for?.
appreciate if someone could give me and others a quick run down of the costs we are expected to pay. There seems to be a bit of confusion in here especially with keirnna having to pay 80,000 up front. thats 80,000 that would go better in my bank account than in theirs.
mavis
macrumors 601
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G (white): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5A347 Safari/525.20)
@funkdis:
I think that visa might hurt you. Softbank requires gaijin to have at least 26 months remaining on our visa to qualify for the 'Japanese people' pricing. Of course, there are ways around this - for example you don't have to use forms of ID which show your visa status. Please see my earlier posts in this thread for details (or just call 157, press 8 and then 9, 9) ...
My visa expires in two months, but I paid the same as a Japanese person, and I didn't have to give them my CC number. Loopholes FTW!
@funkdis:
I think that visa might hurt you. Softbank requires gaijin to have at least 26 months remaining on our visa to qualify for the 'Japanese people' pricing. Of course, there are ways around this - for example you don't have to use forms of ID which show your visa status. Please see my earlier posts in this thread for details (or just call 157, press 8 and then 9, 9) ...
My visa expires in two months, but I paid the same as a Japanese person, and I didn't have to give them my CC number. Loopholes FTW!
SaSaSushi
macrumors 601
If you don't mind my asking was it just a lucky purchase, someone you know who sells them or did you get it online (auctions, etc)? If the new revisions don't get announced soon I am definitely in the market for the very same model.
Have any current Softbank users been able to upgrade to an iPhone? I am willing to pay off the remainder of my current phone, however the nearest Softbank store said that they were only selling the iPhone to new customers (or people switching from docomo or au).
I have a feeling that this isn't store policy, and just a manager trying to up his new sign-ups, but I would like to be armed with some more info before I try again.
I have a feeling that this isn't store policy, and just a manager trying to up his new sign-ups, but I would like to be armed with some more info before I try again.
SoftBank email notification
Hi all Japan iPhone users. I really don't like the weak email notification for my SoftBank email (or any email I guess). I went to "My SoftBank" from the iPhone and I checked the option to have me notified of emails (SoftBank's "Push" service I presume). It's working fine, girlfriend sends me test email and I get notified right away. The problem is that the notification is nothing more than a popup saying "You got a mail". That's it, no sound, no vibration, nothing. So I setup mail preferences to fetch my SoftBank mail every 15 minutes. This will give me an extra notification from the iPhone. It's a little better, I get one tiny chime and it vibrates for like half a second...but not much better. On my old phone, and any other cell I've had, there are countless notification options for email, calls, SMS, etc. iPhone does not seem to have any customization options for this.
How are you guys dealing with this?
Hi all Japan iPhone users. I really don't like the weak email notification for my SoftBank email (or any email I guess). I went to "My SoftBank" from the iPhone and I checked the option to have me notified of emails (SoftBank's "Push" service I presume). It's working fine, girlfriend sends me test email and I get notified right away. The problem is that the notification is nothing more than a popup saying "You got a mail". That's it, no sound, no vibration, nothing. So I setup mail preferences to fetch my SoftBank mail every 15 minutes. This will give me an extra notification from the iPhone. It's a little better, I get one tiny chime and it vibrates for like half a second...but not much better. On my old phone, and any other cell I've had, there are countless notification options for email, calls, SMS, etc. iPhone does not seem to have any customization options for this.
How are you guys dealing with this?
mavis
macrumors 601
Yeah, every Japanese phone I've ever owned has had GREAT flexibility in customizing alert types/frequency/duration. The iPhone is very American in this regard (I say that because in my quest for a decent phone I've owned close to a dozen handsets here in Japan, and every one of the foreign-made phones has really SUCKED when it comes to alerts and customization, IMHO) ... What the iPhone really needs is a taskbar 'new message' icon like has been available for ages to jailbreakers. As it stands now, I just power the phone on from time to time to check for new messages. Now that I think about it, you're right - it does kind of suck. 😱
SaSaSushi
macrumors 601
While I am not yet ready to switch over myself, when I inquired about the iPhone at my local Softbank shop the only problem was a lack of stock. They said they would have absolutely no problems with doing a "kishuu-henkou" handset replacement contract the moment I was ready (and they were restocked). I've been with Softbank since they were J-Phone, going on 9 years now.
In fact, the prices for new contracts and replacement handset contracts are prominently displayed side by side just above the demo model in the store.
I would try some other shops if I were you.
Yeah, that's what I'm doing as well. It's no problem now because it's a new toy and I fire it up every 5 minutes anyway to play with it. Once that wears off though, I'm gonna resent having to constantly check for new emails. I wonder how the first iPhone in the U.S. deals with notifications. At least SMS since mobile email is not widely used.
Anyway, I'm hoping many talented programmers here in Japan start coming out with applications to add the missing functionality we expect here (emoji and alerts customization tops my list).
whats the run down of your monthly fees that they are charging you.
went into softbank shbiuya station, they said 58000yen fo 8gig, and 8800yen for 16gig, on white-plan.
that sense no makes for me.
Yeah.. the extremely weak new messages notification/reminder feature is one of a few things (probably the single one) which drives me really mad.
What would help if to have iPhone vibrate every xx minutes in case there are unread messages. One might say somebody will write an app that does just that, and sell it thru AppStore. Unfortunately, writing apps like that is not possible due to Apple-imposed restrictions on AppStore apps (applications can't stay in background, and that is exactly what is required in order for that app to work).
So, basically, there's not way to have "working" notifications currently, but once iPhone 3G is jailbroken (probably as soon as due this week), I'm going to jailbreak it just for the notification feature from non-AppStore developers ( http://ripdev.com/kate - extremely f**king pricey, but luckily the dev is a friend of mine 😉
It will never hurt to tell Apple about that btw.. Going to do that now..