I have a confession to make. I finally took the plunge and bought an iPhone 3G.
Stay tuned for unbox photos and an in-depth post on iPod touch vs. iPhone where I’ll detail the changes I experienced upgrading from the touch to the iPhone.
For this post, I’ll talk about my experience getting an iPhone in Japan.
Preparing to go
As a foreigner, sometimes getting a phone can be a nightmare. So I made sure I had my passport, credit cards, and alien registration card with me before I head to my local SoftBank store.
At the store
The process went rather smooth. I had been using a Nokia 6680 phone with SoftBank for about two years. It seems like changing phones is a breeze for foreigners. All I had was to show my alien registration card.
Of course, I picked the white 16GB model. I had to fill in some paper work and listen to explanations about the data plan and mainly how iPhone is different from the typical Japanese cell phones. Then the clerk took out an iPhone and activated it. It was a rather fast process – about 20 minutes in total.
At home
Once I got home, I hooked the iPhone up to my Mac to finish setting up. In particular, it was nice to give me the option to set it up as a new iPhone or restore from the backup of my iPod Touch. I decided to set it up as a new iPhone because there are some apps on my touch I don’t want on my iPhone.
Anyway, the setup was a breeze. After that, I set up my email accounts and MobileMe accounts. There were some hiccups with MobileMe. For some reason, my Address Book on Mac suddenly had duplicate entries of everything while the iPhone didn’t. I restored my Address Book using Time Machine, and re-synced everything again. Everything seems to be working fine for now.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!
Anyway, the setup was a breeze. After that, I set up my email accounts and MobileMe accounts. There were some hiccups with MobileMe. For some reason, my Address Book on Mac suddenly had duplicate entries of everything while the iPhone didn’t. I restored my Address Book using Time Machine, and re-synced everything again. Everything seems to be working fine for now.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!
4 comments:
hi there..
I just got to Japan a few weeks ago, as an exchange student. Will be here for over a year, so I thought to myself, why not get an Iphone while I'm here.. :) I went to softbank's store, and been told that it's gonna cost me ~60 000yen + ~4000yen/month. Is that how you got one? I thought that Japanese get them much cheaper.. Much appreacited for info!
Hi! Welcome to Japan! I remember the first time I was in Japan as an exchange student. Anyways, in the case of a 16GB iPhone, you can buy it for 80,640 yen without a contract. If you enter a 2 year contract, the price becomes 34,560 yen, which you can pay in 24 installments or all right off the bat.
As you can see you're getting an discount of around 46,000 yen. The way it works is that SoftBank spreads this discount across 2 years, and each month, you receive the a portion of this discount. If you break off the contract at any time, basically you have to pay the remainder of the discount amount you haven't received. Hope that makes sense as it took me a while to comprehend. So you get about 2000 yen discounts every month. And say if you decide to break off the contract after one year, you have to pay up the remaining year of discounts, which would be 24,000 yen.
So in a nut shell, for a 16GB iPhone and if you only use it for one year, you'll probably be paying 60,000 yen. Here's an explanation of how the monthly discount thing works in English on SoftBank's home page - http://mb.softbank.jp/mb/en/price_plan/superbonus/index.html .
Let me know how it turns out!
Ahlan from Dubai!
Hello there, recently there are people selling duplicate i-phones here, and they claimed that this duplicate is made in Japan, instead of China; and that aside of the smaller memory (only 5 GB instead of 16GB) everything looks & works just the same as the original.
I wonder, if that is true, that Japan had gone down the path (of duplication makers) along with China.
Your input (as someone whom I considered should've had better knowledge about Japan’s electronic market) will be highly appreciated.
Arigato gozaimasu!
Regards,
Midori.
Hey Ahlan,
Thanks for the comments. I have never heard Japan make any duplicate i-phones. I would safely assume that there aren't any. To reverse engineer an iPhone is quite hard, and you have to put the OS on to it and make sure everything works. Not sure the costs would justify.
In any case, I would recommend getting an Apple one instead. You'll have warranty, and you'll know it will work with you PC and Macs, and stuff.
But you should wait, as there's a big announcement in June. A new iPhone might be announced =)
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