Tag: Softbank

  • iPhone5

    日本文が後ろに続きます。

    I got iPhone5. I kept Sony’s Xperia Android phone, but the iPhone is easier for me to use, with a wider variety of accessories sold all over the world than Sony.
    I haven’t got any Softbank’s nano-SIM card, so I went to the nearest DoCoMo shop to get a DoCoMo nano-SIM card for it, but they didn’t have any. I visited some other DoCoMo shops to ask for one, but none of them had it. Without a nano-SIM card, it couldn’t be activated, and it was just a small plate.

    A DoCoMo shop in Tochigi-shi thankfully said they had a nano-SIM card for iPhone5, although most DoCoMo shops in Tokyo said they didn’t have any. When I drove to the shop, there were dozens of people waiting in the queue. A shop clerk said I should wait for one hour and a half to be served, but I actually waited 30 mins or so before being served. I managed to get one, put it into my iPhone I had bought before and had it successfully activated.

    iPhone5をゲットしました。XPERIAも悪くはなかったんですが、iPhoneのが使いやすいのと、世界中でアクセサリーが充実しているので。
    近所のドコモショップに行ってnano SIMカードを発行してもらおうとしたものの、入荷待ちとのこと。他のドコモショップに言っても在庫なし。これがないとアクティベーションができないので、さしものiPhone5も単なる板。。。。

    都内のドコモショップはほぼ全滅でしたが、栃木市のドコモショップがnano SIMカードの扱いがあるとのこと。栃木までクルマを駆って行くと、すごい待ち時間。1時間半かかると言われましたが、実際には30分ほどで自分の番が来ました。なんとか入手し、iPhone5に入れて、無事にアクティベーションできました。

    2013-02-03 17.48.27.jpg

  • My current mobile devices

    I bought Blackberry Curve 9300 in the middle of June for my main mobile phone I’m using daily and switched an account from b-mobile into NTT DoCoMo again by the Mobile Number Portability service. The b-mobile SIM card was what I got together with an iPhone 4 Hong Kong version. Still, the iPhone 4 was not so good for a telephone because its voice quality was not satisfactory and the manoeuvre was a little bit complicating. It’s just for web browsing, taking pictures and motion videos, playing games, and other utilities, not for talking. I think the best device for voice calls is that of Nokia, but Nokia doesn’t sell any mobile phones in Japan any longer. Out of the phones available in Japan, Blackberry is for me. That’s why I’ve got Blackberry again.

    Another reason why I chose Blackberry again is that it has a real QWERTY keyboard on the device, not displayed on the screen. You can type the keyboard to enter text, and doing this is much easier than touching the virtual keyboard on the screen. So I’m gonna use it for text messaging and email writing besides talking on it. Text messaging will be much more convenient because sending SMS to other carriers will be available next Wednesday.

    Although the iPhone is not so good for a telephone, it’s best for a camera and a communicator with plenty of applications. I’ve got a Softbank SIM card too, so I still use iPhone4 used so far on the main basis with the Softbank SIM card inserted in it.

    Now I’ve got three mobile phones carried with me —- Blackberry Curve 9300, iPhone 4, and a mobile phone, my employer, tells me to keep. Next, I want to have some tablets like iPad or Galaxy Tab 😉

  • Japan’s mobile environment today

    Sorry for not updating the blog for a long time. These days I’m hanging out on Facebook and Twitter, rather than writing blog entries. Please visit my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/masayuki.kawagishi or follow @_Yuki_K_ on Twitter 😉

    I see that the world of mobile phones is rapidly changing for years. Nokia, one of the dominant mobile phone manufacturers, is disappearing, and Apple is expanding the market with the iPhone, its flagship mobile phones with a music player, games, and other applications all-in-one. Following apple, various mobile phone manufacturers, from Samsung to small makers in China, are releasing smartphones with the Android operating system developed by Google.

    In Japan, I think that mobile phones are rapidly “globalised” in recent years. A few years ago all you could see here was the “Galapagos” handphones sold only within Japan and unavailable once you brought them out of Japan. But recently on the train or the streets, you see the same devices as those seen in the rest of the world — iPhones, Android smartphones, and even Blackberry phones (scarce though).

    More than that, this month I had good news showing Japan’s globalisation of the mobile phone environment. News says that from 13 July this year you can send text messages (SMS) to the mobile phones of the different carriers from yours. That is normal in the rest of the world, but that isn’t here in Japan — if you have a mobile phone sold by NTT DoCoMo, you can send SMS only to NTT DoCoMo users, not to au, Softbank, or any other carrier’s users. As the SMS gateways are closed to different carriers, you can rarely see here such services as balance enquiry, network configurations, service registrations, and purchasing something by sending text messages to service providers as you can see in Singapore, Hong Kong or some European countries. The opening of the SMS gateways will probably enable you to have such services even in Japan soon.

    Japan and the countries other than Japan don’t stand in the opposite. Japan is an extension of other countries, and any country is an extension of Japan. Anything available in the world must be available in Japan too.

  • I’ve got an iPhone4! / iPhone4ゲットしました!

    iPhone4_bmobile.jpg
    日本文が後ろに続きます。

    It’s a little bit late, though.

    I had used Nokia N82 with Softbank Mobile’s SIM card as a main mobile phone so far. I had told my friends the phone number of it. But it had been kind of inconvenient because it had had narrower signal reception areas than the mobiles of NTT DoCoMo so if you had gone underground or deep into a big building you couldn’t have had it communicated. More than that, (it’s the situation peculiar to Japan, though) you can send SMS only to the mobiles of the same carrier as yours. Most of my friends had NTT DoCoMo mobile phones, so I’d wanted to change the carrier of my handphone into NTT DoCoMo.

    NTT DoCoMo had released Samsung’s Galaxy S handphones in November, and they had been lovely for me, but they had been in such a short supply in those days that I couldn’t have got any. I’d given up waiting for one.

    At that time, Japan Communications had begun releasing b-mobile’s micro-SIM cards together with unlocked iPhone4 imported from Hong Kong. JC had been selling the imported iPhone4 to its customers on hire purchase. JC was providing mobile phone service using NTT DoCoMo’s network, so if you had a mobile with b-mobile’s SIM card installed you could use it in almost the same manner as NTT DoCoMo, including sending and receiving SMS to and from NTT DoCoMo’s phones.

    That’s why I purchased b-mobile’s micro-SIM card called “b-micro talkingSIM” and iPhone4. Before the purchase, I had cancelled the contract with Softbank Mobile and had the phone number used in it reassigned to the new micro SIM card so that I could use the same phone number as that I had told my friends.


    ちょっと遅い気もしないでもないですが……。

    電話番号を人に教えているメインの音声回線としてNokia N82にソフトバンクのSIMを入れて使ってたんですが、ソフトバンクはなにぶんエリアが狭くて、地下やビルの奥などでは電波が届かないことがままありました。それに、(日本特有の事情として)異キャリアにSMSが送れないというのがあり、周りにドコモユーザーが多い中、ソフトバンクだと不便を感じることがあったので、ドコモに変えたいという思いがありました。ドコモは11月にサムソンのGalaxySをリリースしたのでぜひ欲しかったんですが、なにぶん品薄で手に入らず……あきらめることにしました。

    ちょうどそのころ、日本通信がb−mobileのマイクロSIMカードと香港版SIMロックフリーiPhone4をセットで分割で売り出すプランを始めたというのを知り、これは渡りに船だとばかり、これでiPhone4をゲットしちゃおうと思った次第です。b−mobileならドコモのMVNOなのでドコモ携帯にSMSが送れますから。

    てことで、「b−micro talkingSIM」というb−mobileのマイクロSIMカードとiPhone4を買っちゃいました。買う前にMNPでソフトバンクを解約し、こっちに電話番号を移し替えました。

    bmobile.jpg
    b−mobileのSIMカードは完全にドコモのそれでした。ただb−mobile独自のAPN、ユーザー名、パスワードを手動で入れることになっており、さらにドコモが提供していないテザリング用の設定項目までついてました。

    マイクロSIMカードを切り取り、iPhone4のトレーに乗せて本体に挿入し、iTunesの動いているMacBookProとつないで電源を入れると……

    iPhone4_activated.jpg
    数分して無事にアクティベートされました。アプリもiTunesからダウンロードできましたし、連絡先やメールアカウントなどのデータもちゃんとシンクされています。もちろんドコモ携帯へのSMS送受信もバッチリです。

    Q-SIM.jpg
    おまけ:Q−SIM Dual SIM Card。マイクロSIMカードと普通のSIMカードを1本の薄いケーブルでつなぎ、2つのSIMカードを1台のiPhone4で使えるスグレモノです。ケーブルの一端をマイクロSIMカードとトレイではさみ、それを本体に差し込み、他方の端に別のSIMカードを入れて本体の背中側へ折り曲げ本体をケースに入れると、別々のキャリアの携帯番号が1台で使えるようになります。SIMカードの自動切り換えも可能です。

  • Unlocking my Blackberry / ブラックベリーのSIMロック外し

    Unlocking my Blackberry / ブラックベリーのSIMロック外し

    日本文が後ろに続きます。

    I’ve made my Blackberry Bold SIM-unlocked, because the Blackberry I bought in Japan was locked to NTT DoCoMo, a Japanese mobile phone carrier, so when I was abroad I had to fear the phone bill charging highly expensive roaming prices.

    Unlocking was easy: I got an unlock code for my device at http://expressunlockcode.com/bbexpress.aspx by paying $19.99 and giving the IMEI for my device, phone model, carrier name locked to and my country to the unlock code provider. Several hours later from paying I got an unlock code for the IMEI I gave. Then I unlocked it by following the instructions at http://www.mobileslate.com/blog/2008/11/14/how-to-unlock-rim-blackberry-9000-bold/. Once unlocked, you can use not only NTT DoCoMo’s SIM card but Softbank’s, as shown in the above picture.

    (Blackberry services aren’t available with Softbank’s SIM card, though)

    今持ってるブラックベリーはドコモのSIMロックがかかっているので、そのまま海外に持って行って使うとドコモの高いローミング料金におびえなければなりません。ということでSIMロックを外しちゃいました。

    SIMロックを外す手順はネット上に簡単にころがってます。まずhttp://expressunlockcode.com/bbexpress.aspxで19.99ドルを払い自分の端末用の解除コードを入手します(その時、自分の端末のIMEI、電話機の機種、ロックがかかっているキャリア名(NTT DoCoMo)、国名(日本)を入力します)。支払いはPaypalで行うので、数時間後にPaypalのメールアドレス宛に解除コードが送られてきます。次にここの手順に従ってSIMロックを解除します。解除後は冒頭の写真のようにソフトバンクのSIMカードも認識してくれるようになりました(ブラックベリーのプッシュメールサービスは使えませんでしたが・・・)。

    これで海外に持って行ったときは現地のプリペイドSIMカードに差し替えて現地キャリアのデータ定額サービスとブラックベリーサービスを契約すれば(現地キャリアのプリペイドSIMカードはこういうことが簡単にできる)現地料金で使えるようになるはずです。

    言うまでもないことですが実際に試す際は自己責任でお願いします。
    参考サイト:http://markion.vox.com/library/post/blackberry-9000-bold-のsimロック解除.html

  • Softbank announces Nokia N82 and E71 to be released in Japan

    Nokia_N82.jpg
    Nokia_N71.jpg
    Softbank has announced today that 16 types of its "2008 winter model" cell phones will be released this winter. Among them, Nokia N82 will be on sale in the middle of this November and Nokia E71 in this December.

    Nokia N82 is a tiny, light cell phone with a 5 Megapixels of digital camera where an auto-focused Carl-Zeiss Tessar lens and a Xenon flashlight are equipped. HSDPA data receptions, Bluetooth v2.0 (A2DP, HFP, HSP, DUN, BPP and more profiles), wireless LAN connections (IEEE802.11 b/g) are available. You can play YouTube motion videos with it. An internal GPS antenna is equipped and navigation is available using NAVITIME for Smartphone or Nokia Maps.

    Nokia E71 is a business-use smartphone with a QWERTY-style full keyboard, covered with stainless steel. It's a bit smaller than Nokia E61, the previous model, and unlike E61, this has a 3.2-Megapixel camera. HSDPA connections and wireless LAN access are also available like N82.

    These phones will be released from Softbank Mobile, but unlike other Japanese typical cell phones, they has no "Softbank" logos printed on their body.nor are they named any carrier-oriented model numbers like "X03NK". They are called just "Nokia N82" or "Nokia E71", like those sold in the rest of the world.

    They attract me very much. I want to get at least one of them!

  • 【Softbank】X02NK/Nokia N95発表【春モデル】

    今日、ソフトバンクから春モデルとしてX02NK/Nokia N95の発表がありました。

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