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Original_Z posted:Hmm, the lack of OLED on iPhone4S is a big disappointment. Wondering if I should just get it or go for an Android phone now. I guess it terms of apps they're pretty equal, yea? My friend has an Android phone and it's constantly freezing up on her, are performance issues like that common? My friend got Docomo's cheapest Android handset (I'm pretty sure it was the cheapest, anyways) and it's given her similar issues. My Galaxy S II will have a hiccup every now and then, but I don't notice it being much worse than my iPod Touch as far as reliability.
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Oct 5, 2011 09:37
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I guess if you want to buy into the Apple ecosystem, iPhone is much better software-wise (obviously). Personally iCloud is lost on me... since my Mac Mini is too old and you need minimum 2GB of RAM to install. Seems like Apple and Google have an equivalent for most everything now.
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Oct 5, 2011 09:41
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Suppose I'll be staying up until midnight in case preorders open up on the Apple Japan site... Fingers crossed.
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Oct 6, 2011 09:10
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KDDI taking preorders beginning at 4PM today: http://av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20111007_482343.html?ref=rss 0 yen for the 16GB version; pretty awesome.
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Oct 7, 2011 01:13
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zmcnulty posted:KDDI taking preorders beginning at 4PM today: I'm thinking about which carrier to go with. Ive got an iPhone 4 with Softbank now. It's ok but the coverage / speed could be better. AU's service quality should be better but its a CDMA network so its limited to 3.2mb/s. It won't be able to make use of its higher data speed. Also Softbank have always been cheap for me where as AU have been expensive in the past.
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Oct 7, 2011 01:51
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Anyone know what the price for the iPhone 4S unit sans contract is yet? Or is that even possible?
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Oct 7, 2011 02:58
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72000円 is what I last heard reported for a 64GB from AU.
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Oct 7, 2011 03:39
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Kaleidoscope posted:72000円 is what I last heard reported for a 64GB from AU. I'll probably have to do that too as companies rarely like to give out phones for free to me. I wouldnt mind spotting the 72,000 though. Think if I pre-order today I can sign up and get the phone on the last day of the month, rather than next Friday? I wont have enough money on Friday, sadly...
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Oct 7, 2011 04:08
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Whelp, SoftBank is in it to win it: http://www.softbankmobile.co.jp/ja/news/press/2011/20111007_01/ 45 minutes until preorders start. edit: why get an 8GB iPhone 4 when you can get a 16GB iPhone 4S for the exact same price? What am I missing? zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Oct 7, 2011 |
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Oct 7, 2011 07:16
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DMOZ- you can use my Softbank prepaid with ￥2000+ credit on it. It calls and texts but has no camera. ￥2000 and a promise to return it when you're done is all I need.
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Oct 7, 2011 09:51
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All right, I've never used an iPhone before, so how does it work here? Can I access both the Japanese and American stores? I'd want to have the useful Japan-only applications, but if I buy poo poo like productivity software and games, I'd prefer the language to be in English. Is there a way to get both at once?
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Oct 8, 2011 03:08
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Original_Z posted:All right, I've never used an iPhone before, so how does it work here? Can I access both the Japanese and American stores? I'd want to have the useful Japan-only applications, but if I buy poo poo like productivity software and games, I'd prefer the language to be in English. Is there a way to get both at once? You can set the primary language to English but retain your Japanese keyboard/settings. The stores are tied to your own iTunes accounts so the apps come from there. Not sure if you can have multiple iTunes accounts on a single iPhone. There are however numerous useful Japanese and Japan-focused app on the US App Store.
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Oct 8, 2011 03:13
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I have apps from both my American and Japanese iTunes accounts on my iPhone. However, there are two caveats: 1. You can only download updates for the account your are currently logged in to, so it can be annoying to keep everything updated. 2. You can't use the new Automatic Download feature without locking your device to a particular iTunes account for 90 days.
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Oct 8, 2011 09:00
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Broke my old iPhone 3GS last night, so I figured, what the hell, and reserved a 4S this morning. The old 4's are still the same price as they used to be for some reason, so there was really no reason not to get a 4S. Hope I don't get too much of a delay because I need a drat phone.
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Oct 8, 2011 09:33
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Interesting post here: http://softbanksucks.blogspot.com/2011/10/au-appears-to-win-iphone-comparison.html But pretty misleading because he doesn't appear to be including the service charge discount you get from SoftBank that drastically reduces the actual outlay for the phone: http://mb.softbank.jp/mb/iphone/event/reserved/price_plan.html http://www.kddi.com/corporate/news_release/2011/1007b/besshi.html zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Oct 11, 2011 |
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Oct 11, 2011 07:40
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It says he updated the tables, so maybe you caught an early draft? Otherwise I really don't know and you're probably right. I also think he's wrong about the iPad thing, I still think it's Softbank going crazy and trying to get people onto another data plan (and a fresh 24-month contract) so they're giving away 16 gig iPad 2s instead of just giving you a free contract upgrade. That said I just got my iPhone 4 in August here and have no problem wheeling around and walking out empty-handed if Softbank isn't giving iPad 2s away, so I'm not exactly shopping for deals right now.
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Oct 11, 2011 14:55
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Ah yes, seems he updated the post. Not that I really expected a website called "softbanksucks" to present an objective viewpoint.
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Oct 11, 2011 15:26
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I don't suppose that there's someone here who reserved an iPhone 4S and has gotten a confirmation that the phone will be ready tomorrow? I can see on my smashed iPhone I got a mail on my i.softbank mail, which I basically never use and don't give the address to anyone, so I'm wondering if they sent me a mail saying my phone will come in... so I wondering if anyone else got some kind of confirmation mail, and how it came. Edit: I'm seeing on a 4S mixi community that a lot of people who reserved well after I did got a call that their phone will come tomorrow, so I hope that mine will be there. LimburgLimbo fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Oct 13, 2011 |
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Oct 13, 2011 14:57
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Speaking of mixi, is there any clever way to bypass the cell phone registration? I use a prepaid phone, so while I receive the confirmation mail, I can't visit the site. Am I going to have to get a proper plan if I want to register? Some people I know claimed that they were able to register without registering cell phones when they used their school e-mail address, but that didn't work for me.
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Oct 14, 2011 02:17
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I'm just looking forward to hearing people's impression of AU iPhone.tyblazitar posted:Speaking of mixi, is there any clever way to bypass the cell phone registration? I use a prepaid phone, so while I receive the confirmation mail, I can't visit the site. Am I going to have to get a proper plan if I want to register? Some people I know claimed that they were able to register without registering cell phones when they used their school e-mail address, but that didn't work for me. You used to be able to register using normal Email addresses, but they changed it so you need to have a Japanese phone and can access the confirmation through your phone. It was done to get rid of spammers and advertising accounts, and was definitely a change for the better. I guess you'll have to decide whether you think being able to have a mixi account is worth buying a proper plan for. If you don't use your phone very much, then I can't really see it being worth it.
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Oct 14, 2011 02:32
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Original_Z posted:I guess you'll have to decide whether you think being able to have a mixi account is worth buying a proper plan for. If you don't use your phone very much, then I can't really see it being worth it. I'm lucky in that I signed up back when it was still possible to register from computers. I use mixi a lot more on my computer than on my phone, especially since it has an absolutely terrible app.
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Oct 14, 2011 02:34
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tyblazitar posted:Speaking of mixi, is there any clever way to bypass the cell phone registration? I use a prepaid phone, so while I receive the confirmation mail, I can't visit the site. Am I going to have to get a proper plan if I want to register? Some people I know claimed that they were able to register without registering cell phones when they used their school e-mail address, but that didn't work for me. Borrow someone's phone and visit the link on that?
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Oct 14, 2011 03:04
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Kenishi posted:Borrow someone's phone and visit the link on that? Only works if they haven't registered themselves. Changing the e-mail address won't work either, since they grab the SIM ID.
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Oct 14, 2011 03:29
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Kenishi posted:Borrow someone's phone and visit the link on that?
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Oct 14, 2011 03:32
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So apparently SoftBank's contract registration system has gone tits-up and they aren't taking any more for the rest of the day: http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20111014_483729.html Those of you who wanted the Softbank 4S today, hope you already have one or can wait until tomorrow! Article says KDDI's system is still working fine. Wonder how much this will cost SoftBank... surely there are heaps of people who care more about the phone than the provider. Was thinking about going down to get one (even brought my passport to the office) but it sounds like mayhem. Maybe I'll wait till things calm down, next week or so. edit: false alarm, apparently working again now. zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Oct 14, 2011 |
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Oct 14, 2011 03:41
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Just my luck, my 4S will be in tomorrow, but I have to go to Kanagawa in the morning and stay the night there for a rugby game, so I'll be picking my phone up on Monday.tyblazitar posted:Yeah, guess that's my only hope, problem is finding someone with a phone that isn't registered on mixi. I considered buying a cheap-rear end plan, but I only have around 8 months left of my stay, and don't really need it for anything other than mixi, so I figured it wouldn't be worth it. I'm sure there's someone who has two phones who would help you out. Anyway even if you don't get it done, mixi kinda sucks, so I wouldn't worry about it.
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Oct 14, 2011 09:13
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zmcnulty posted:I guess if you want to buy into the Apple ecosystem, iPhone is much better software-wise (obviously). Personally iCloud is lost on me... since my Mac Mini is too old and you need minimum 2GB of RAM to install. FWIW IMHO iCloud is Apple's third consecutive failure in the cloud. They've tried three times now and have a bad track record with me. I tried switching to google a while ago though and had some minor problems with Calendar (couldn't access any of the secondary calendars, only the main even though I could with (at the time) work's Google hosted apps) and major problem with Contacts; every time it would sync (once an hour) it would make a duplicate of every contact I had, plus, it would make reverse duplicates ie Paul Smith and Smith Paul. It was a huge loving disaster and haven't bothered with it since. My inner geek tells me it is time for you to get a new computer regardless of any new announcements, but my inner immigrant tells me you're not even using your current computer to its potential as is so there's no need to spend the money. So, im conclusion, since you don't use your computer anyways, why do you need to sync your phone to it? iCloud is free (for the amount of data you'll need just syncing contacts/calendar) and you can access it from the browser which is where you will use it most (at work, not on your home machine).
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Oct 16, 2011 06:26
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Exciting week in phone-land. Apple sold a pile of 4S phones with a version of Siri extremely stunted in Japan over the weekend, Docomo just announced the Galaxy SII LTE edition, joint announcement from Samsung & Google tomorrow during Asia hours about next-gen Android+Nexus Prime, and Docomo apparently has "5 more" to add to their lineup that they suspiciously weren't able to announce today. Hopefully one of them is the Nexus Prime...
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Oct 18, 2011 05:30
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zmcnulty posted:joint announcement from Samsung & Google tomorrow during Asia hours about next-gen Android+Nexus Prime, and Docomo apparently has "5 more" to add to their lineup that they suspiciously weren't able to announce today. Hopefully one of them is the Nexus Prime... I'd love a Nexus Prime. Who the hell would be dumb enough to get a GS2 LTE with the Prime coming? I thought the Samsung announcement was pushed back to the 28th?
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Oct 18, 2011 05:37
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Yeah, I guess it will depend on the price. iPhone 4S is basically free thanks to the subsidies, so Docomo would have a tough time convincing customers to shell out 60,000 yen or whatever for a Droid with (presumably) better specs. I mean yeah it'll have a nicer screen and a new version of Android but is that worth $$$ to most people? Probably not. Given the popularity of the GS2 I can see them using that handset to compete on price with the iPhone 4S, and the Nexus Prime to compete on features. So extremely unlikely that the Prime will be as heavily subsidized as 4S, IMO. Announcement is still on for tomorrow. ....and Docomo just confirmed that they're releasing whatever Samsung announces tomorrow, in November: http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20111018_484534.html?ref=rss zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Oct 18, 2011 |
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Oct 18, 2011 05:55
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Keep in mind a bigger screen isn't necessarily better http://dcurt.is/2011/10/03/3-point-5-inches/
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Oct 18, 2011 06:21
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Depends on how big your hands are.
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Oct 18, 2011 06:28
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True So take that on to consideration when you try them out. Mi have human sized hands, not freakishly large German hands so iPhone works well for me. But it also has a larger screen than my ancient first to be released in japan android phone.
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Oct 18, 2011 06:37
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The iPhone is too cramped for me to type comfortably and the GS2 is almost good enough, so I figure the Prime should be perfect.
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Oct 18, 2011 07:29
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So I'm not sure if it's because my Apple account is tied to my phone or because I added my Japanese message mail address (the @softbank.ne.jp address) to my Apple ID, but I'm getting the new iMessage service working with iPhones in the U.S. as well as Japan. This is easily the best thing to come out of iOS 5 for me, since I have a lot of friends back home with iPhones...just need to convince them all to make sure to upgrade the OS.
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Oct 18, 2011 14:53
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Whelp, no LTE/Xi support for Docomo's Nexus Prime. http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20111019_484722.html?ref=rss They're really pushing the tech specs of the device but honestly I doubt most people will care if it ends up costing 50000+ yen or whatever at release. Especially when the iPhone 4S is literally free and iOS is as dug-in as it is. zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Oct 19, 2011 |
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Oct 19, 2011 04:38
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After 2 years of having trouble getting an iPhone from softbank and having to pay the money upfront. I went to Softbank on Friday to pick up my pre-order and they wanted to try to put me through on the monthly payment / discount thing they do for the iPhone 4s. I didn't think it went through but it actually went through! Not sure if it went through because it went tits up or it was too swamped so they approved everyone, or they need customers so bad anyone can get a free iPhone now. Sitting here playing with my 64gb iPhone 4s. Feeling pretty good. Oh, one plus for going with softbank; AU hasnt got its iPhone MMS sorted yet so you can't receive MMS messages until January sometime. Luckily I'm softbank so whatever!
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Oct 19, 2011 05:31
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Just got a verizon 4S in the states, but I'm applying for JET soon, and I'm curious; if I were to get in and move over there, would there be any way to get the phone I have working on au or softbank instead of having to buy a whole new phone or pay stupid amounts for roaming?
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Oct 19, 2011 20:40
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Bakanogami posted:Just got a verizon 4S in the states, but I'm applying for JET soon, and I'm curious; if I were to get in and move over there, would there be any way to get the phone I have working on au or softbank instead of having to buy a whole new phone or pay stupid amounts for roaming? Verizon and Sprint will unlock your GSM band so you can stick whatever sim you want in there from "roaming" on GSM. Just happen to roam permanently on Softbank.
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Oct 20, 2011 00:34
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Bakanogami posted:Just got a verizon 4S in the states, but I'm applying for JET soon, and I'm curious; if I were to get in and move over there, would there be any way to get the phone I have working on au or softbank instead of having to buy a whole new phone or pay stupid amounts for roaming? This is all anecdotal, but I've heard that bringing outside phones to a Japanese network is either impossible, or such a huge pain in the rear end that it isn't worth it. I wouldn't worry about it though, iPhones are dirt cheap over here if you sign up for a 2-year contract.
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Oct 20, 2011 01:31
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