iPhone その2 (and some ranting about eMobile)

Photo by Diego SepulvedaI am now the second MFT contributor to buy an iPhone. Roy took the plunge a few months ago.

I generally agree with all of Roy’s comments about the device itself. It has a few drawbacks, but it’s a great machine overall, and probably the best solution for someone who wants a multilingual smartphone that doesn’t suck.

There was one point which grated on me, though:

Softbank hates foreigners

If you read Debito’s blog, you already know this. Back in 2007, he reported that Softbank was requiring passports and gaijin cards from all foreigners entering new phone contracts or requesting special services, despite the fact that Japanese nationals could choose from several other forms of ID. Then, last year, he reported that foreigners with less than 16 months left on their entry permit could no longer pay on the installment plan.

I first tried ordering my phone directly from Softbank, in order to take advantage of a corporate discount which my employer has through its relationship with Softbank. The contact at Softbank corporate replied that he would send over the documents, with one caveat:

I apologize for asking, but do you have Japanese nationality and a Japanese [driver’s] license? If you have a nationality other than Japan, an alien registration card and passport (within its term of validity) are required. They must be within their term of validity and you must have a duration of residence of more than 27 months. There must be a photo, address, name and date of birth, and they must match the address, name and date of birth on your application. If your status of residence is “Temporary Visitor” or “No Status,” you cannot apply. You must also pay by credit card.

Those rules sounded silly to me, so I decided to look them up myself. Here’s what Softbank officially says:

If applying by using an alien registration card and passport as personal identification, please be aware of the following.
(1) If your duration of residence is less than 90 days, you cannot apply.
(2) If your duration of residence is 15 months or less from the date of your application, you may not enter a discounted purchase contract. (You may pay by lump sum at the store.)
(3) If your duration of residence is more than 15 months but 27 months or less from the date of your application, you may only enter a discounted purchase contract divided into twelve payments. (You may also pay by lump sum at the store.)
(4) If your duration of residence is more than 27 months from the date of your application, you may enter a discounted purchase contract.

Note that, by the language of those requirements, they only apply if you are using a gaijin card as ID. Softbank has not publicized any documents which say that a foreigner has to use their gaijin card, or that they have to pay with a credit card.

I would recommend a couple of strategic points for others who want an iPhone, don’t have enough time left on their permit and don’t want to lose a lot of money:

  1. Don’t go directly through Softbank or a Softbank store. Go through a third party, like an electronics store. They are less likely to care about Softbank rules and more likely to care about getting you out the door with a new phone.
  2. Don’t use a gaijin card as ID if you don’t have the necessary period of residence left. Use another form of ID, and be sure to point out that the 27-month rule only applies if you are using your gaijin card as ID.
  3. If you still can’t get the right deal, go to another store. If you ask to talk to a manager, they will probably waste your time calling Softbank corporate and getting a stone-wall answer.

The really odd thing about these requirement is that other acceptable forms of ID do not prove Japanese citizenship or lack thereof (e.g. health insurance card or chipped driver’s license), so if you say you are a citizen, Softbank really has no way to prove you wrong (unless they can bribe their way into government databases).

But that’s enough about Softbank. Let me complain a bit about eMobile before signing off.

Why I switched from eMobile

Readers may recall that I adopted an eMobile phone about a year ago, mainly because I was moving to a new apartment with no existing internet connection. I didn’t want to wait a month to wire the place for high-speed internet, so I decided to get an eMobile phone that would tether to my PC for free.

This turned out to be pretty good for most purposes–fast enough for web browsing and even for BitTorrent. The biggest drawback was ping time. Since the connection had to go through my phone, through the air and through a bunch of 3G routing equipment, it often had crappy latency, which made it hard to use Skype, online games and other connection-intensive software. Even YouTube gave me problems at times.

After a few months of that, I had optical fiber installed, and then the drawbacks of my eMobile phone became more and more apparent. The Windows Mobile OS was buggy and often locked up, requiring a restart in order to use the phone. Some third-party software kept activating my 3G connection even when I didn’t want it activated, which severely ran up my phone bill on a trip to Taiwan.

Then came the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. One night last week, my phone just stopped working. Internet use gave me a “modem connection error,” and calling out gave me a message saying my phone wasn’t activated.

I emailed customer service, and got a reply the next day which said that my phone had, indeed, been deactivated. This was because the contact phone number I gave at sign-up was no longer active. This, in turn, was because it was my old deactivated Docomo phone, which the eMobile store said I could use as my conact number.

Rather than help fix the problem, the online customer service agent told me I had to call eMobile. I called, got an annoying voice prompt, and eventually found my way to an agent, who took down all my personal information and then immediately told me I had to call someone else (at a local Tokyo number, no less). I called the new number, was placed on hold again, and got another agent, who told me that the one person who could help was assisting someone else and would call me back “in a few minutes.” A few hours passed without a call-back, and that was enough for me to put in my MNP application online. My new iPhone was up and running on the same number just a couple of hours later.

35 thoughts on “iPhone その2 (and some ranting about eMobile)”

  1. OK I havent read the article yet, but I love that Spanish-language iphone ad. Doing anything in Spanish makes it that much cooler

  2. I have a 1 yen keitai from AU that I bought four years ago and costs me almost nothing per month. I can’t imagine what an iPhone can do that this piece of crap doesn’t. Namely, call people, which is all I want a phone to do.

  3. I thought so, too. The most amusing part is mixing Spanish with English.

    When I was in high school in Florida, I lived close to an enormous outlet mall called Sawgrass Mills (part of the same chain that owns Potomac Mills). Each entrance to the mall was color-coded and named after a tropical animal (“Blue Dolphin,” “Green Frog,” “Red Snapper,” etc) to make it easier to remember where you parked. There was also a speaker over each entrance to announce which entrance it was in English and Spanish, but the Spanish announcement used the English name instead of translating it. So if you waited by the door, you would hear the following all day long:

    Female American voice: “You are passing through the Blue Dolphin entrance.”
    Frenzied male Spanish soccer announcer voice: “Usted está pasando por la entrada [short pause, then very slowly] BLUE DOLPHIN”

    I probably have the Spanish wrong, but anyway, it sounded so funny that we all joked about it at school. “Tenemos el iPhone” ain’t bad either.

  4. I also have a 1 yen keitai that costs me like 1200 yen a month.

    I understand why people buy the iPhone now, but with the dawn of the netbook age (can the 200 gram stoked netbook be far off?), I’m wondering if the all-in-one-sexy-handset is really the future.

  5. Well, it’s a personal thing. I have gotten by with one-yen phones in the past, but still wanted an all-in-one-sexy-handset. In law school, I carried around a phone, iPod, PDA and laptop in order to get the combination of functionality I wanted. Now the iPhone effectively replaces the first three and almost replaces the fourth; I still need a computer to do “real work” but I can get almost all of my mobile computing needs from one device that fits in my pocket.

    I can’t personally justify a netbook, though. Any netbook that’s large enough to have value as a netbook will not fit in my pocket and will probably not be usable with one hand on a moving train, which means it is only valuable during those rare periods when I am sitting down but not near a “real computer.” If I flew or rode the Shinkansen often it might be a different story.

    My girlfriend, also a 1-yen keitai user, is amazed at how I can play with the iPhone for hours, but she’s also an iPod owner and really likes the idea of having an iPod integrated with her phone. It’s *really* nice to be able to watch video or listen to music and have everything pause automatically when someone calls you, then talk to the person without even taking off your headphones.

  6. Ah, I can see that it is very well suited to the Tokyo lifestyle.

    The NA car/office/coffee shop/plane lifestyle – not so much.

    Considering the future – I can imagine an all-in-one handset that can be hooked up to an ultra lightweight screen/keyboard, replacing the need for netbooks. Something tells me that Apple is going to drop the ball sometime in the next decade, however.

  7. Apple already have dropped the ball with regards to security. It’s shockingly unsecure for corporate use and deleted items can be retrieved by any competent hacker. “http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/iphone-encryption/”. The iPhone is cool I will admit, however, my use of smartphones is mainly work driven and corporate policy has us all using Blackberries. I can type emails far faster on a Blackberry then iPhone – which for me is the killer app.

    It all depends on what you want it for. For the corporate world the iPhone still has a long way to go.

  8. I love the Blackberry keyboard, too. Unfortunately, there are only two Blackberry models available in Japan (a discontinued blue “global edition” model and a current black “bold” model), and both have horrible user interfaces. A few of my colleagues use one and they tend to complain whenever I ask about it.

  9. “Ah, I can see that it is very well suited to the Tokyo lifestyle.
    The NA car/office/coffee shop/plane lifestyle – not so much.”

    The iPhone has much wider adoption in the US and EU markets than in Japan. That may be because the competition for the iPhone outside of Japan is pathetic, but it’s probably because the iPhone is a great smart phone.

  10. Don’t forget that SoftBank accepts Driver’s licenses for ID’s. A local SB store manager told me that is how foreigner’s can best skate through the application process.

    I carried around a phone, iPod, PDA and laptop in order to get the combination of functionality I wanted. Now the iPhone effectively replaces the first three and almost replaces the fourth; I still need a computer to do “real work” but I can get almost all of my mobile computing needs from one device that fits in my pocket.

    I found this too, so when I bought a new computer this year I broke my habit of always getting a laptop and bought an iMac. I would even goes as far as dropping the “mobile” from your comment. All of my daily computing needs (email, RSS, Facebook, Twitter and even some blogging) I do on my iPhone. Not to mention watching TV shows (I am working my way through the latest season of 24), and listening to audiobooks and podcasts. It is only when I need to do “real work” that I turn to my iMac.

    My iPhone is my netbook.

  11. I am noticing more and more iPhones on my commute, though they seem to be more popular among gaijin than among Japanese. There are still several drawbacks to using an iPhone versus a domestic keitai:

    1) The touch screen can approximate keitai input for typing Japanese, but it is still not as intuitive. The physical 10-key pad is nice for this, and typical keitai character conversion and predictive text databases are better than the iPhone’s.

    2) No TV reception unless you buy a separate tuner, which is on a cable and way too cumbersome to be useful. (I see *lots* of people watching TV on the train.)

    3) No IC payment (Suica/Edy) chip, which may not seem like a deal breaker but can be aggravating not to have. For instance, it’s often the only way to charge a train pass or buy a commuter pass using a credit card that isn’t affiliated with the train operator.

    4) Although I haven’t encountered this yet, I assume that the iPhone’s Safari browser is incompatible with certain Japanese mobile websites designed for i-mode-style keitai browsers. I know that mixi’s mobile site was very finicky with mobile IE, and that the ordinary web version was nearly impossible to use on a small screen.

  12. Just to share my iPhone experience, I recently switched my DoCoMo B-number (work number) over to an iPhone using MNP. Now I heard about the passport and gaijin card thing, and since my visa expires next summer, I figured I was going to get stopped on it. Instead, my plan was to show my health insurance card, which counts as a valid for of ID here for a lot of places (It got me a credit card easy!). However, I walked in to the Softbank shop in Ebisu, gave them the MNP form, was told to wait 10 minutes or so for paperwork, had them swipe my card for monthly payment purposes, and walked out with my new iPhone 10 minutes later. Zero copying of cards, passports, and no hassle. Smoothest experience I’ve ever had getting a phone, even more than the hey-day of 0 yen phones.

    On the other hand, my co-worker was told he had to pay full price for the phone up front from his Softbank store by his home in Futako-Tamagawa or they wouldn’t give it to him.

    They really need to get the policy set straight at all their stores.

  13. Gen and SB – Didn’t mean to suggest that the iPhone is not popular in NA, just that there does not seem to be a “lifestyle thing” like train communtes that can explain its popularity. I think that it is mainly popular as a “hot” (and as I understand it, pretty excellent) consumer product that people use to meet various information / entertainment needs.

  14. I don’t think SB hates foreigners. From my personal experience, I’ve always received very good service from them. They were one of the first phone services that had foreigners in mind, when I first arrived in Japan over 8 years ago.
    I think it’s more likely that their contract with Apple is very restrictive and costly, which is why they need to make sure that they get the most out of their iPhone users. Considering how cult like most Apple users are, they’d probably be willing to suffer some inconvenience or indignity to get their hands on an iPhone.
    As many have noticed, the biggest users of iPhones are probably non-Japanese, and non-Japanese can skip town before SB had made enough revenues from the monthly subscription to cover the cost of the iPhones.

  15. Klimmer, I think you’re right about their motivation, but the Softbank policies regarding foreigners are simply idiotic. Why?

    (1) The same “flight risk” applies for Japanese as for foreign nationals. Have you ever tried to collect on an unsecured debt in Japan? I advise against it, because you will never see your money unless you threaten to break some kneecaps.

    (2) The time remaining on an entry permit does not indicate how long someone will stay in Japan. A permanent resident can still leave tomorrow, and a person whose permit expires tomorrow can still have it renewed and stay indefinitely.

    (3) As noted above, if someone applies with a Japanese driver’s license or insurance card, there is no way to tell whether or not they are a Japanese citizen without getting the police or a PI involved.

  16. While something I’ve been generally told while dealing with housing issues for myself and company employees, the general opinion of gaijin and “flight risk” is that most Japanese people are less trustworthy of other Asians, while Westerners tend to receive more trust. That still means you’re going to get turned from places though.

    I’ve heard this on 2 or 3 occasions from different companies. So far as bluntly being told “oh, american’s are ok, it’s the chinese and koreans that get up and leave”

    Unfortunately enough, there has been a couple of korean employee’s (no longer employed) that did quite get up and leave without paying the last month, cleanup, etc. Thankfully we weren’t the guguarenteers. So I can see where the idea comes from..

  17. If you still can’t get the right deal, go to another store. If you ask to talk to a manager, they will probably waste your time calling Softbank corporate and getting a stone-wall answer.

    This will not work. Softbank uses a central processing center to approve or disapprove you for the payment plan. I know this because I spent an hour on the phone with them asking them questions like:

    “Can you tell me what you consider in your examination?”
    “no”
    “Can you tell me what you DO NOT consider in your examination?”
    “no”
    “Do you consider nationality?” (国籍)
    “no”
    “But I thought you couldn’t tell me that…”

    I called originally and they called me back, so I (obviously having nothing better to do) drug the conversation on in this fashion for about an hour, since it was on their dime.

    Apparently you are also more likely to be approved if you pay by credit card.

    softbanksucks.blogspot.com

  18. “I can’t imagine what an iPhone can do that this piece of crap doesn’t. Namely, call people, which is all I want a phone to do.”

    Ken, I know what you wanted to say, which is what matters. I’m sure you can imagine, but you just don’t care.

    I switched from a 1 yen salaryman phone to an iPhone two months back precisely because that “piece of crap” was designed for a salaryman (complete with the secret address book in case your wife checks the recent calls log).

    The development and ideas being shared in the iPhone development community makes it great to try out applications (designed by people all over the world) and instantly see what people are thinking about them, and whether they are worth the money, if they’re not free already.

    On top of that, as Joe mentioned, it’s nice to have my audio entertainment and my phone integrated, because I answer more calls from my wife. For someone who hates ringtones, that is a godsend…

    As for Softbank hating foreigners, I want to say that they probably have to be more cautious, given that they are securitizing much of the “kappu-barai” installation payments, and so they have to answer to a much larger field of investors if credit losses start to pile up, (or there is volatility in the monthly payments). They need 24 months of steady payment from a subscriber, otherwise they have trouble throwing it into the same subscriber pool with everyone else.

  19. @Curzon

    I wouldn’t really call it dedicated as it was just me being annoyed and having about 2 hours to kill one weekend. But I think it is an issue that needs to be addressed. Maybe we can at least shame softbank into being more transparent about their approval process

    Or at the very least, get them to do the 審査 at the freaking beginning instead of after an hour of paper work and signing off that, yes, I do know that the emoji and email is potentially broken with other carriers, etc…

    If anyone wants to add a story or two, leave a comment or email @gmail and we -er I can add it 🙂

  20. I got my iPhone at the Softbank store on Imadegawa right next to the Kyodai Yoshida campus and had very little trouble. Oddly, the health insurance card was considered better ID than my passport or gaijin card-perhaps because it falls under the category of ID that a Japanese person can use.

  21. klimmer,

    “[Softbank was] one of the first phone services that had foreigners in mind, when I first arrived in Japan over 8 years ago.”

    Softbank wasn’t in the mobile phone business eight years ago.

  22. As for Softbank hating foreigners, I want to say that they probably have to be more cautious, given that they are securitizing much of the “kappu-barai” installation payments, and so they have to answer to a much larger field of investors if credit losses start to pile up, (or there is volatility in the monthly payments). They need 24 months of steady payment from a subscriber, otherwise they have trouble throwing it into the same subscriber pool with everyone else.

    This would sort of make sense, except that (as far as I can tell) the 27-month rule *only* applies to iPhones. I am pretty sure that you can get an equally expensive handset, like the “internet machine” which Curzon owns, on a 2-year payment plan without a period-of-stay check.

  23. Man, yesterday I was out in Osaka and my iPhone shut off without warning, because the battery indicator stayed at 100% despite my sucking it dry from web use. Sure, I should have realized something was fishy before-hand but that’s still an annoying bug. Good thing I have a spare battery I keep in my bag if I’ll be out of Kyoto!

  24. I seem to remember being asked to show my card to show I was legally able to remain in Japan to pay off the two-year plan (for Softbank). It does seem logical that there is more risk in selling to a one-year visa holder than a Japanese national: true, the Japanese can always skip the country, but realistically, how likely is that for an unpaid phone bill? When I did apply, I only had a one-year visa, and it was two months away from expiry. However it was a spouse visa, and said spouse was with me (because we were getting their White Plan and she wanted her own phone) so nobody said a word about anything. So while period of stay is important, the type of visa is also important I would say.

  25. Why would it only apply to iPhones, I wonder. I am a so-called “fukusen” user, so all the contractual schnizz-schnozz takes place under my wife’s name, and thus there is no flight-risk check. Back to this question: At first, I assumed that Softbank would try and protect against people signing up to get their iPhones, only to leave after x months, with the majority of the balance of their phone unpaid. This allows them to show up in another country, slip in a new provider’s SIM chip and start using, as if they got a steep discount on the price of the phone.

    So what I’m wondering now is whether Softbank checks *only* for the iPhone, or for all phones that could work in other countries.

  26. @ Jade Oc:

    Not sure about the type of visa. My visa is 教授 (professor) and I work at the most well-know university in Japan. If having the status of professor is not enough… I used to be on a spouse visa… but that changed (for the better in this case ;)) Since that just changed, I just got a new 3-year visa a few months ago because my old 3-year visa was expiring.

    But then again, I never showed my passport or registration card, only used my health card and a gas bill, so they would have no idea about my status.

    There are two things I can think of:

    1) I have no credit record in Japan, so if it is like the US, no credit history is the same as a bad credit history.

    2) My pay is not a salary per se but a living stipend (生活費), so depending on what they are checking and what information is available for them to check, they could perhaps think I am unemployed.

    But since they give no info on what they check, I am only speculating.

    @ Ken: indeed, 8 years ago they hadn’t even become vodaphone yet and were still J-phone and I was their customer.

    Maybe they just hate non-Korean foreigners since the president, Son or something like that is Zainichi.

  27. I used to have a Professor visa, and that was what I was on when I got my first keitai here (with vodaphone) , but a spouse visa is demonstrably better: a professor visa, like almot all visas, ties you down to an occupation and requires a sponsor. And for phones, the advantage of spouse in this case is that it automatically gives them a better way to track you, plus the assumption that you are here for family rather than (short-term) work-related reasons, and likely to stick around.

  28. I know what you mean. I used to be free to work wherever I wanted. Now I am not. Oh well. Could be worse.

  29. I arrived in Japan earlier this year and bought an iPhone directly through SoftBank, to take advantage of their “iPhone for everyone” (free iPhone) campaign.

    I encountered no hassles. The sales person requested my gaijin card, as well as passport in order to see the visa and confirm the validity of my gaijin card. She explained to me that since my visa was only good for 1 year, I was not eligible for the 24-month installment plan and would have to pay for the iPhone up front (30720yen, which I paid in cash, not credit card).

    BUT the 1280yen/month discount would still be good for 24 months, meaning that in keeping my account for two years, I will receive 24×1280=30720yen in discounts. This is of course on top of the 1575yen/month discount off of the normal 5985/mo the packet plan that was being offered during the 3G campaign.

    I have of course been checking my account online to confirm all discounts have been applied (which they have).

    Some SoftBank store employees may still think they are to discourage foreigners from buying iPhones, so you may need to try a few different SoftBank stores. It may also help to mention that I spoke in Japanese during the application/purchase process.

  30. Curious, I had exactly the opposite experience. I wanted to get a new iphone for my fiance, so I went to sofmap. They insisted i had a long visa and gaijin card there, so I had alittle argument with them about retarded rules then left.

    Then I went to softbank store and was told something entirely different – “no problem, you have a drivers license so we can just use that as ID”. So, sorry guys, but I gotta call bullshit on this one. It depends entirely on what store you go to, and who you talk to in the store. Try a different clerk.

    So, can we please stop spreading lies?

    1. You do not need a gaijin card, and you do not need a visa of whatever length. A driving license can work just as well (Japanese that is)

    2. If you have a credit card from japan, you can pay monthly.

  31. Did you pay for the phone up-front? What they told me at the store is that the visa is only necessary if you’re going to be paying for it in installments.

  32. Quick comment about the chipped driver’s license mentioned in the post: for privacy reasons, the 本籍 {honseki} that is PRINTED on recent driver’s license is blank (or not present on very new cards) for both Japanese and non-Japanese. Previously, it was only blank for non-Japanese, so the absence of anything printed in that field was a giveaway that the person was a foreigner.

    However, the internal RFID chip itself inside the license DOES contain the 本籍 field, even if it is not printed on the card. In the case of non-Japanese, the person’s nationality (country) is in this field.

    So people with the proper reading equipment AND the PINs CAN use a IC-chipped driver’s license to determine if one is a foreigner or not. To get the name, dates, and license number requires the first PIN you registered.

    To get the 本籍 and your digitized picture, however, the second PIN is required. Get either one of the PINs wrong three times in a row and the IC chip locks out further access; and only the police can unlock it.

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