I need a phone that will work in Japan!

L

Lina Lou

New member
My sister will be studying in Japan for a year, now the questions are:

1. Is it better to buy a cell phone in Japan? or should my sister buy one in Hong Kong and use it there?

2. If my sister were to buy a cell phone in Hong Kong? Which phone would you recommend? The requirement for the phone would be just as long as it works in both Japan and in Canada!

Thanks in advance!
 
Better to buy one there, and keep a different phone, or at least a different plan and SIM, for use in Canada. Foreign roaming prices in Japan, and Japanese rates for roaming outside Japan, are insanely expensive. It's actually cheaper to have two accounts and phones than it is to use one country's account in the other country.
 
Well, if she wants to get a phone that she can keep after she leaves Japan, she should looking into maybe a Sharp 902 or 903. She can always buy a phone there, but it will most likely be locked and it's notoriously hard to unlock Japanese phones.
 
Recent reports are saying that a 902/903sh is nearly impossible to get, as it's been replaced by the 904/905. Certainly, she won't find one at the Voda shop.

The 703SHf and the Toshiba 904t are both unlockable, and both should be currently available.
 
Yes- but if she buys it there, it will most likely be locked- she will have to find a place to get it unlocked. 2 places that I can think of are Tokyo Bikan and L&K. Both unlock shops have websites (Tokyo Bikan is Japanese only- www.tokyobikan.com, while L&K has an english website- www.landk.ne.jp/en).
 
tell her to suspend her service here (call her provider and tell them she's travelling for a year but to hold the account for when she returns)and get a phone in japan...and when she gets home she can unlock it here and use it.
BUY a 3G AND GSM CAPABLE PHONE! They use both in Japan on a regular basis, and usually they switch between the two without you noticing. When she gets back it will work on our GSM, and then maybe one day we'll have 3G, too.
 
Wow, some of you all have no idea what you're talking about. You can't take a Razr over to Japan and use it just because it's quadband. The 3G phones they sell in Japan, especially the softbank ones have GSM for ROAMING purposes only. They don't switch back and forth without you noticing, they simply stick to the 3G bands.

Also, any hope of using a 3G phone from Japan here is useless, it is highly unlikely any carrier in NA will deploy 2100mhz WCDMA.
 
Actually, they do work on local service- my V904T certainly works here in China with a local SIM card- maybe the unlock hasn't left this region yet, so you wouldn't know. Now, the DoCoMo phones can't be unlocked, but the Vodafone/Softbank ones certainly can (except for the V905SH). You are right about normal quadband phones not working in Japan, though- just not about Japanese 3G phones, because those most certainly can automatically switch between 3G and GSM when you leave the country. Maybe no NA carrier will have 3G at 2100MHz, but they certainly have GSM right now.
 
I think you misunderstood what I was saying with the switching part. The way the other poster said it, he made it seem like that's what happens in Japan, which isn't true. Yes it does automatically switch, but when in Japan, the phone sticks to 3g
 
Well, hang on. Is it possible that some of the US/EU providers may have very limited GSM service in major metros? (Tokyo, Osaka, etc.) I discovered that there's a Rogers network in LA when setting up my Toshiba's network, so clearly it's not unprecedented for one country's carrier to set up their own network in a country they don't at all service.
 
no, it wouldn't be cost effective at all for them to do that. Not only would they have to buy spectrum in each country (which may not even be available), they'd have to physically set up and maintain the network from scratch. It's too expensive a job for the very small number of users who would take advantage of it.
 
Ah, stupid me, didn't even think about the frequency licensing issue.

I'm still wondering what the heck Rogers is doing with its own towers way down here in LA, though...
 
Actually, there is a 3G version of the Razr- the V3x if I remember correctly. Also, DoCoMo is also coming out with their own version of the Razr- if it didn't work in Japan it would be massively stupid of them to do that.
 
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