I'm going to Hong Kong tonight. I last visited there six years ago. I'll be back to Japan on Sunday 6th.
Action items in Hong Kong: to get SIM-lock-free iPad2 and, if possible, iPhone4S at Mong Kok; registration of new address and passport number for my account of HSBC; and sightseeing at Stanley, Aberdeen and Lamma Island.
....thanks to Steve.
I bought Blackberry Curve 9300 in the middle of June for my main mobile phone I'm using on a daily basis, 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, but the iPhone 4 was not so good for 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 iPhone is not so good for a telephone, it's the 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 a 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 ;-)
Sorry for not updating the blog for a long time. These days I'm hanging out in 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 are rapidly changing for years. Nokia, one of the dominant mobile phone manufacturers, is disappearing and Apple is expanding the market with 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 Android operating system developed by Google.
In Japan, I think that mobile phones are rapidly "globalised" for 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 in the train or on the streets you see the same devices as those seen in the rest of the world --- iPhones, Android smartphones and even Blackberry phones (very rare though).
More than that, this month I had a good news showing Japan's globalisation of the mobile phone environment. A 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 the SMS gateways will probably enable you to have such services even in Japan in the near future.
Japan and the countries other than Japan don't stand in opposite. Japan is an extension of other countries, and any country is an extension of Japan. It is essential that anything available in the world is available in Japan too.
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 very attracting for me, but they had been in so 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. Prior to 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 to my friends.
The b-mobile SIM card was completely the same as NTT DoCoMo's, but you had to set up b-mobile's original APN, user name and password manually to the iPhone4 to have it activated. Besides, you could set up configuration of tethering, which only JC allowed its customers to use while NTT DoCoMo didn't.
I cut the micro SIM card off the frame, put it on the micro SIM card tray of the iPhone4, inserted the tray into it, plugged it in my MacBook Pro where iTunes was operating, and turned its switch on.
A couple of minutes later the iPhone4 was activated with no problems. Applications were downloaded from iTunes to it, and the sync of other data including contacts and email accounts was successful. Of course, SMS can be sent to friends with NTT DoCoMo mobile phones!
A gadget: it's Q-SIM Dual SIM Card, which allows a normal SIM card together with a micro SIM card to be installed in iPhone4, so that you can use two different SIM cards in one iPhone4. Two SIM card slots are connected with a thin link, one of which accepts a micro SIM card and the other a normal SIM. By sandwiching the micro SIM card plate of it with a micro SIM card and a micro SIM card tray, putting it into iPhone4's micro SIM card slot and folding the rest of the link so that it reaches the back of iPhone4 which is put into a included case, you can use two different carriers in one iPhone4. Auto-switch between the two SIM cards is also available.
I purchased a prepaid SIM card with 3-day broadband service at M1 counter in Changi Airport. Unlike normal mobile phones like Nokia, iPhone didn't receive an APN or other network setting information needed for internet access. The M1 counter lady said I needed to bring the iPhone to the M1 shop at Paragon and have it installed settings there.
I asked the MRT station staff where I could get to Paragon and she answered I should go to Orchard station, so I took MRT train to Orchard.
Here's Paragon. It was very large.
M1 shop was on the B1 level. When I waited in line in front of the shop, a shop girl came to me and asked what she could help me. I told her I wanted to activated internet service for my iPhone. Then she led me to the front of counters in charge of activation or other services and gave me a paper printed a queue number to let me wait until the number was called. Tens of minutes later I was called by a counter girl. The activation took a little more time because my iPhone hadn't been purchased at M1 shop but in Hong Kong. Anyway the activation was successful and I could have access to the internet with my iPhone.
After activation I went to Little India.
There were dozens of gold jewelry shops on the streets selling golden stuff and buying items with gold. I wonder if there are many such stores in Asian cities.
There were plenty of Indian restaurants as well. The below is one of the local restaurants. People were eating foods put on a banana leaf by hand, like people in India do.
Because Singapore is very close to the Equator and today was almost autumnal equinox, the Sun passes the top of the sky. This video is when the Sun was on the top at solar noon. Vertical sunshine can never be experienced in Japan.
I'm going for trip to Singapore and Malaysia until next Thursday because we have the "Silver Week" in Japan, with two national holidays (next Monday and Thursday) and three days of leave. For me this is this year's second trip to foreign countries. As I have 20,000 miles of United Airlines' frequent flyer program, I can get a round-trip ticket from Japan to south Asia. I chose Singapore because Singapore is the country where I enjoyed six years ago and I have looked forward to visiting again. This time, I'm going to visit Johor Bahru and another city of Malaysia because they are close to Singapore and maybe I can have easy access to those cities.
I'll bring unlocked iPhone bought from Hong Kong other than regular cell phones I use on a daily basis, so as to use it at cheaper costs by replacing Softbank's SIM card I always use in Japan with prepaid SIM cards I'll get at destination countries. Skype is installed on the iPhone so that I can receive calls at any time regardless of countries I'll be in, even if a phone number will be frequently changed.
United 803 to Singapore
The plane departed Narita at 1735 and arrived at SIN at 2330. It was earlier than scheduled. Seven hours' flight in the economy seat of United Airlines was kind of tough and I had severe back pain when I got off :(
Arrival Gate
Immigration
Arrival Level
Last night I attended a meeting for alumni of Osaka University, where I graduated, to see the presentation by Ryuji Yamada, President and CEO of NTT DoCoMo, one of Japan's mobile phone operators. Mr. Yamada is also a graduate from Osaka University and was invited to this meeting as a guest speaker.
He talked to us about NTT DoCoMo's current circumstances, innovation plans and future strategies. He said in advance that the revenue from voice communications was decreasing year by year and so far the loss was not completely compensated yet by the revenue from packet communications, so innovations in packet communication was important. He also added that one of the important things right now was to change policies so as to meet the current situation where mobile communication market in Japan was reaching its full maturity. He said that he had launched the "All-DoCoMo Reform Plans", where more than 3000 current problems had been collected from every workplace, ranging from R&D divisions to local shops, and the problems had been dealt with 25 project teams for discussion and improvement. Some of the problems were solved by the plans. One of the solutions is a special assurance plan to dispatch an on-site consultant engineer to the customer who complained of dissatisfied signal reception at home, within 48 hours from the time of this customer's complaint call.
The most impressive point of his presentation was that mobile devices will be tools for personal activity assistance. Since the first era of them, YOU have done something with them, from voice communications to internet access and electronic wallets. In the future, THEY will do something for you. They will proactively help you do something. One of such solutions already in service is the "i-Concier", where text messages such as traffic information, weather information, and local event information, are automatically displayed on mobile phone's screen, according to date, time and phone's location obtained from antennas communicating with the phone.
Media for information distribution is, according to his speech, shifting from text-based message to motion videos. He said that, as smart phones was being more and more popular, video would be the key media used for not only entertainment but tourist information, online shopping, navigation, security and medical assistance.
For such advanced services by smart phones, high network performance is necessary. Mr. Yamada declared that in December 2010 NTT DoCoMo would launch Long Term Evolution, or LTE, a 3.9-generation mobile telephony service, starting with that for the 2GHz band and to extend to that for the 1.5GHz band, and would offer 3G/LTE-dual handsets next year. With LTE terminals, radiowaves can be used approximately 9 times more efficient than current 3G terminals. That is, you can enjoy 9 times smarter services than today's phones.
To prevent NTT DoCoMo's LTE system from making the Galapagos ecosystem, he emphasized that NTT DoCoMo also did international activities more energetically than ever. It founded research and development facilities in Beijing, Europe and the United States, for contribution to standardisation and normalisation in the projects of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, or 3GPP. At the same time, it's investing developing countries' operators like TTSL and TTML in India, in order to help do business with it.
It's greatly welcomed that mobile services will evolve to be more advanced and attractive for users. My hope is, as written in the last entry, to accept any terminal I want to use, as long as it meets the basic standards.
I've bought an iPhone. I ordered it from a broker in Hong Kong who got it at Apple Store Hong Kong, because the iPhone sold in Hong Kong is locked to no particular mobile carriers. In Japan, you can buy an iPhone at a Softbank cell phone shop but they sell only the iPhone locked to Softbank. Softbank does offer international roaming service, but if you go out of Japan and use it with a Softbank SIM card in a foreign country they will charge tremendously high international roaming charges to your bill (It costs as high as hundreds of thousand Yen per day! Crazy!). That's why I've got an unlocked iPhone so that I can freely replace a SIM card into that issued at the country I'm in when I travel abroad.
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!
