SoftBank iPhone Announcement: Free Wifi, watch TV with iPhone, and emoticons in Japan by the end of 2008

In the announcement of SoftBank regarding the new line up of cell phones for winter, they also made some exciting ones for Japanese iPhone users. Here are the announcmenets.

1. Free wifi for iPhone users at about 3,500 locations (McDonald’s, train stations, airport, and etc.)
   
   
2. An external unit that serves as a mobile digital TV receiver and battery. This is seen in the following image. As you can see, the design is surely inspired by the iPhone itself, but it’s not availble in white! 
   
   
   
   What’s neat is that if you just want to watch TV, you do not need to hook the device to the iPhone. The unit pairs up with the iPhone, and transfers the TV contents via wifi to a TV app, which will be provided by SoftBank for free.
   
   This will be available in December for about 10,000 yen (about $100). I personally need the battery over the TV function, but it’s nice to have the TV function just in case. 
   
   This is definitely a creative way to enable watching TV on iPhone.  I think we're going to see other TV tuner products like this soon in other countries using a similar concept.  
   
   
3. As rumors have already circulated, within this year, the iPhone will support emoji (the Japanese word for emoticons). 

It seems SoftBank is definitely listening to its consumers in Japan.   Well, I'll probably get the the TV / Battery pack.  

Stay tuned and thanks for reading!

Source:
IT Media (Japanese) - You can also see actual photos of the TV / Battery pack itself. 

iPhone vs. Japanese cell phones: 15 Features that iPhone doesn’t have for the Japanese market

In Japan one of the things SoftBank make sure you understand when you buy an iPhone is the features that the iPhone doesn’t have or cannot use. Below is an image of that section from the paper work.

Explanation and translations corresponding to the numbers in the image are:

1. S! Addressbook Back-up – Basically it’s a service to back up and sync your contacts to a server. A nice feature included in the service is birthday notification via SMS. To learn more about this service, see here – it’s in English =)
   
   
2. S! Friend’s Status – It’s a service that lets you set your status and mood. You can also check up on your friends’ status. See here for more info.
   
   
3. S! Info Channel – News and weather info are delivered to your cell. What’s cool is that supporting cellphones well display the current weather conditions on your default home screen.
   
   
4. Remote lock – In the case you lose your cellphone, you can remotely lock your cell phone.
   
   
5. Yahoo! Kids – Basically this service blocks the kids from accessing inappropriate sites.
   
   
6. Web Access Restrictions – This blocks users from visiting sites such as matching sites for teenagers.
   
   
7. Ichi Navi – It’s basically a service for parents to know where their children are via GPS. See here for more info.
   
   
8. Voice Mail Plus – An upgraded voice mail service with more message capacity for other SoftBank cell phones.
   
   
9. S! Felica – Basically an e-wallet and electronic train pass. See here for more info.
   
   
10. E-Comics – Basically new phones can download a special comic viewer that lets them buy digital copies of comics.
    
    
11. Video services
    
    
12. Infrared functions
    
    
13. 1 seg – function for digital audio / video services
    
    
14. bar code reader
    
    
15. cell phone ring tones – Since iPhone users can only buy ring tones from iTunes, they won’t be able to buy anything from the mass selection of ring tones provided by the carrier. Bummer.

So there you have it. Features and services that the iPhone does not have in the Japanese market.  It's interesting that they didn't mention that you can't use emoticons on the iPhone.   Well, at least until the next version of iPhone OS as reported by MacRumors.  Maybe, SoftBank knew the feature was coming... 

Deciphering how and what to pay for an iPhone in Japan

How much and how do you pay?
The way you pay for an iPhone in Japan is a little bit unconventional, perhaps hard to understand would not be an overstatement. I will use the 16GB model as the main example.

Basically you have two options:

1. Pay up front the full price of 16GB - 87,840 yen (about $878)
   
2. Pay in 24 installments - 87,840/12 = 3660 yen per month (about $37)
   

Now when you enter in to a 2 year "New Super Bonus" contract, every month you get a discount of 1,920 yen (about $19). If you accumulate all the discounts, it becomes 46,080 yen (about $460). So if you subtract that from the regular price (87840 - 46080), which is 41760 yen (around $418). This would be the actual price you're paying for the iPhone 3G 16GB.

If you went with option 1, and terminate the contract, you basically just don't get the discounts.  If you went with option 2, and you terminate your contract, you just have to pay the remaining installments.  Of course, you won't receive the discounts either.  

Urgh!!! A crack on my white MacBook!!!

Is this fixable?  I guess I have to drop by the Apple Store.  Or maybe this is a sign telling me to get a new MacBook Pro?

Transform your iPhone 3G into a mini iMac with iClooly

I posted about iClooly for the iPod Touch back in June. Apparently, it’s now also available for the iPhone 3G as well.

What’s cool with the iClooly is that it swivels so you can have your iPhone / touch in either lanscape or portrait view. The only problem is it wouldn’t work if your iPhone / touch has a case.

The iClooly for iPhone is available on iClooly.com for $47.00.

Buying an iPhone in Japan

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!

The Sanctuary: Beautiful and modern charging station for your iPod touch / iPhone / and everything else (almost)

Came across this from an email newsletter from AssistOn (a Japanese store that sells designer items).

The Sanctuary is a stylish charging station from Bluelounge. According to their website, users can “charge their cell phone, PDA, Blackberry, iPod, MP3 player, and Bluetooth headset simultaneously in one location.”

It is available on Bluelounge website for $129.95. It comes in white and black. The inner tray is reversible with two colors black and tan.  The tan color would work well with wooden surfaces and Muji-style interior. More info and details are on their website.

This one is on my wishlist…


Thanks for reading!