Softbank Prepaid Phone (201SH)
Introduction
After rental phones, prepaid phones are the second option for getting a mobile phone for temporary visitor. Often prepaid phones have higher calling cost but as a bonus the user can get a phone number that doesn't change. This is useful for those who visit Japan often and want to know that their aquintances will be able to contact them.
Currently most popular is the company Softbank that offers few types of prepaid phones, starting from 2000 yen model (201SH). One can purchase phone cards from convenience stores and charge credit to the phone via this method.
Getting it
When I went to the Softbank shop in Takadanobaba the sales person in the shop adviced me to go to Shinjuku as he said that that particular shop was expensive. Indeed he was right, his offer was 11,000 yen with 3000 credit.
So I went to Shinjuku to the Softbank shop. The guy looked me with a little hesitation at first. And it took about half an hour to fill all the blanks, I had to write pretty much every information about me, except my blood type. And they took multiple copies of my passport, and driver's licence. I got the sense that they might reject my application any time if they find me suspicious. So I tried to smile and give good impression. "I'm here on work and I really need this for my business.. I'm not a bad person.."
After the initial step was OK, he told me to come back after an hour. But when I did came back, the phone was waiting there, and he gave me instructions how to use the phone. Good luck with calling, 100 yen per minute.
The Phone
Sharp 201SH looks nice. It has good and simple design, although it's not foldable type. It's available as black and white. It has a nice color screen and good polyphonic ring tones, email function (more on that later) and voice recorder. No camera though but who cares.
User interface could be better, but this is pretty much the same with all Softbank phones. After you get used to it's feel, you feel comfortable to type messages. But it took me sometime to realize what "Manner Mode" or "Useful Diary" means. And I still can't quite understand the meaning of some of the menus.
The English manual doesn't make much sense. All the terminology is strange, totally different from European GSM world. What is SkyMail?
Services and email
Setting the email address was easy, I needed just to send a short email message to the certain address mentioned in the manual. Then I had my address and I could start sending messages to my aquintances and giving my number.
The trick about email is that they come in two different sizes. SkyMail is short and it costs about 10 yen, but it is really short, two or three lines. LongMail is longer, but there is limit too, and it costs 15 yen. I sometimes received email that was longer than the phone could display, and I found that annoying. Receiving attachment files on prepaid phone is a bad idea as data transfer fees are really expensive and in addition too large file can lock up your service and you need to visit in prepaid phone shop to solve the issue.
In addition there is a web browser, if you want to use it you need to make service contract with Yahoo!. I suspect it is expensive to use.
The Problem
OK, it sounds good, 2000 yen phone with all this functionality. I thought so too. But there is one thing.
Or two things.
The microphone reception is too bad. Everyone I called said the line is noisy and they cannot hear me well. Partially this might be because the cheap phones mic is too bad, or the Softbank line's problems. Many users of Softbank phones complain even with more high end models.
And then, 100 yen per minute will suck your credit empty with few calls. Receiving calls is free though.
I found this very annoying and this rendered my phone basically into a email sending & receiving machine. Its OK to use in situations like (please wait there, I will be 5 minutes late, bye). But well, 10 minutes will cost 1000 yen and you cannot be sure if the other person will hear you.
We will test the higher end model next time, and report if it has similar issue for poor voice reception.
Long Mail is really e-mail that goes through the internet and is received by computers OR keitai from other networks that can receive internet e-mail.
Unlike a GSM handset where you can SMS anyone in the world who is also on GSM by simply punching in their country code and local number, Japanese providers don't receive direct messages sent from other companies' keitai, unless these messages are sent as email via the internet.
Wakarimasen?