Before coming to Japan I knew Japanese cell phones in general were considered more advanced than their western counterparts. That is still somewhat true but western phones have caught up in many ways and at this point it seems more like what is important on a phone is more dictated by culture than technical ability.
Certainly some features like the ubiquitous availability of 3G (or faster) cell service in Japan still is not available in the west. That said, recently it seems like thinness or “cool” factor is more important in the US than it is in Japan. In Japan it is more about phone features, it seems. I have met many people who honestly don’t use normal internet e-mail on a computer. Seriously, they only use their cell phone. Therefore a lot of people’s internet usage, not just e-mail, is done on their cell phone. The phones are geared toward this use.
Recently I have sent an absolutely absurd amount of e-mail on my phone. In the US, I didn’t use SMS or phone e-mail hardly at all. When I wanted to talk to someone, I would call them. I almost never talk to people on my phone in Japan. In the last 23 days I have sent over 500 e-mails from my phone, according to the logs. At my job these days I only send a handful of e-mails a day so my phone usage is by far blowing that away.
It’s basically like IM here. I haven’t met anyone who has asked me “what is your AIM?” or whatever the equivalent popular client is here. I think it’s because there isn’t any. Everyone just e-mails on their phone as their IM client. Due to this phone e-mails are cheap… I haven’t carefully examined my bill but I think the price is nearly nothing. Internet usage on phones here is a lot cheaper than in the US.
Yo Mark! Like the more frequent updates, but what happened to the EQ post? haha
Rofl, you saw that one eh? Even though it was kind of funny I realized there was a fundamental inaccuracy and deleted it. ;-)