Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Carfax Report
May 17, 2003

Ravage the land as never before, total destruction from mountain to shore!

I have an Emobile pocket wifi. It's a pretty nifty device with a couple quirks.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Carfax Report
May 17, 2003

Ravage the land as never before, total destruction from mountain to shore!

Sheep posted:

How much are you paying a month for it, including the cost of the device itself, if you don't mind me asking? And what are the quirks?

Edit: forgot to ask, what's the latency like? Is it weird and burst-y like cellphone 3G or is it actually comparable to being on a wired connection?

The device was free on a two year contract. It was 4k a month for the first year, and 5k a month for the second year.

The quirks are that if you are on a train and go into a tunnel and lose a signal, you sometimes have to do a hard reset. Also, it may stay connected to a device for four hours and then die of lack of battery. (4 hours is its max.) Since it doesn't use a 3G network, sometimes it can't get signal in places where phones can, and vice-versa.

It's not as bursty like 3G but it's not as solid as wired. A happy medium. It's about 3mps download, which sometimes feels slow, but definitely gets the job done.

Lately my apartment internet has been weird so I've been turning it on even at home. I use it with my laptop, iphone, and wifi iPad. All can be connected and sharing at the same time.

Also, it doesn't have every port open so things like bit torrent don't work on it.

Carfax Report
May 17, 2003

Ravage the land as never before, total destruction from mountain to shore!

Emobile pocket wifi is HSDP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Downlink_Packet_Access

Carfax Report
May 17, 2003

Ravage the land as never before, total destruction from mountain to shore!

Consider updating the link in the OP from the old megathread to the new megathread.

Carfax Report
May 17, 2003

Ravage the land as never before, total destruction from mountain to shore!

zmcnulty posted:

From a cost-to-user perspective they REALLY need to prioritize iMessage support. Since sending inter-carrier SMS costs 3.15yen/message in Japan, and MMS support basically sucks on the KDDI side, there could be a lot of au<>SoftBank iPhone users sending SMS without even realizing it costs them each time. The sooner they launch iMessage, the sooner all iPhone users can text each other for free regardless of carrier.

Sounds like they need to deprioritize iMessage and earn some sweet profits.

Carfax Report
May 17, 2003

Ravage the land as never before, total destruction from mountain to shore!

zmcnulty posted:

http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20111205_495932.html?ref=rss

Toei and Tokyo Metro announced you'll be able to use phones between stops on subways in Tokyo. Won't lose reception in tunnels between subway stops anymore. Should be fully done by end of 2012.

I'm guessing it's safety-related; they probably got a ton of complaints from people trapped, unable to use their phones, between stations when trains stop during earthquakes.

My reaction: Great!
The reaction of my female co-workers: Oh no, now people will talk on the phone in the subway.

Carfax Report
May 17, 2003

Ravage the land as never before, total destruction from mountain to shore!

Sashimi posted:

I'm moving to Japan in March, and while I've been educating myself about the mobile market over there I can't seem to find anything about how the cost of a phone factors into a monthly plan. The only info I've found so far is on Softbank's iPhone page, which of course only applies to one phone on one carrier. Does this system, where I either buy a phone outright or pay a monthly fee, also happen with other carriers? If so, how do I find out how much a phone would cost since prices aren't listed anywhere obvious?

Also, if I can ever get my hands on a Nexus 4 I'd love to bring it with me. I'm fairly sure it's compatible with Docomo's network at least, but would they actually set me up with a plan on it despite me buying the phone outside of Japan?

I've got a Nexus that I got from Google as a developer. For unlocked foreign phones, you sign up for the plan at a Docomo shop, but you have to manually change the settings for data as they have no idea how to do it themselves.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Carfax Report
May 17, 2003

Ravage the land as never before, total destruction from mountain to shore!

Preparing to move overseas and looking at cancelation of my softbank contract. Half of it is the remaining cost of my iPhone, but half of it is "remaining monthly payments" which makes it look like I might as well just keep the service on until the contract ends, for the amount of money they are charging to cancel.

Anyone have insight?

  • Locked thread