I just got a droid and I'm worried that I wasted my money cuz I'm about to head to japan...
Cell Phones & Plans - 2 Answers
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1 :
You wasted your money. The droid is a CDMA phone. Japan is GSM. Your phone basically works in the US only. Bring it back if you need a phone to use in Japan. Wait until you're in Japan and get a phone there. Japanese cell phones are far more advanced.
2 :
Don't listen to the last poster. Japanese phones are not necessarily more advanced and Japan is not purely a GSM nation. NTT DoCoMo and Softbank are but KDDI Au is not, they have a 3G CDMA network and they are not some small carrier, they're second to DoCoMo and they're bigger than Softbank. As for the idea that Japanese cell phones are more advanced, he's likely referring to their "advanced" cameras (more megapixels DO NOT MATTER, after about 3.2 on a phone it stops mattering cuz phonecam sensors are weak and the Droid has 5). Other "advanced" features include mobile TV (which trust me, you will NEVER use when you have the awesome web browsing the Droid has and YouTube and Flash video support, the latter coming soon), mobile wallet (which makes it easier for others to steal your financial information and I've ever only seen one person in Japan use it at a McDonald's), aaaaaaand that's about it. No one uses the phone as key things and with the Android Marketplace getting set to rival Apple's App Store this coming year, the Droid will easily outperform any Japanese phone in terms of pure usability much as the iPhone does now despite all the people saying how much it "sucks" but never being able to tell why. You've got an amazing phone and theoretically it should work there on KDDI's CDMA network, although I would confirm this with Verizon. HOWEVER, if you're going to live there, dump the phone and get a Japanese phone with a Japanese carrier when you get there. You don't wanna keep paying an American carrier for long-term service in Japan because the data roaming costs are insane and Android is a pure internet platform. Even if you manually turn off its functionality, accidentally opening the browser, android market, or any internet application will override the command. You can get an unlimited data roaming plan but those are 65 dollars a month ON TOP of your voice, texts, and data you already pay for ($30 for data, $40 for cheapest minute plan, $15 for unlimited texts, $65 for data roaming comes out to $150 not including any minutes used in Japan at $2/min). It's ok to pay that if you're going on vacation for one or two months, I've paid at&t for the similar privilege of using my iphone in Japan for one month (although mine was worse, at&t doesn't offer unlimited but 200 MB for 200 dollars max), but keeping that up will quickly start to wear you down. So back to the point, your Droid should do fine roaming on KDDI's network theoretically, but ask Verizon cuz it's also possible that KDDI does not fully open its network to foreign phones. Also as a side note, you WILL NOT be able to unlock the phone and activate it in Japan. That privilege is reserved solely for GSM phones (those with SIM cards offered by AT&T and T-Mobile in the US and which most of the rest of the world runs on). It IS possible to unlock SOME CDMA phones, but not the vast majority and the Droid counts itself among the unlockable. Hope this helps, if you have any more questions about Japanese carriers and such, email me at Daniel11987@yahoo.com
