Tag: Japan
Softbank announces price of iPhone 3G in Japan
Softbank, the mobile network which has won the iPhone 3G for Japan, has announced pricing for the device.
The handset itself will start at ¥23,040 (around £108) for the 8GB model, and ¥34,560 (£163) for the 16GB version, while monthly tariffs would start at ¥7,280 (£34), which is around 70% higher than the average price currently paid for mobile contracts…
91% of Japanese consumers won't buy iPhone because of fixed battery, claims media survey
According to Tech-On, over nine in ten Japanese consumers won’t buy the iPhone 3G when it launches, primarily because it does not have a removable battery. At least, that’s the conclusion drawn by Daimaou, writing at Akihabara News, who is incensed at the survey.
The survey of 402 people asked questions including “Do you prefer replaceable batteries?”, for which three-quarters of respondents said they did, and then seemingly drew the conclusion that most consumers wouldn’t buy the iPhone 3G…
Can't find a taxi? Get a Smart Car out of a vending machine instead
Photographed in Tokyo’s Shibuya Station is this awesome oddity – a vending machine for the virtually disposable little Smart Car. You may select a convertible or hard-topped model, depending on how flash you’re feeling.
Then you can drive off looking very silly indeed.
Obviously it’s not real. You won’t get a car out of it – just some promotional…
Japan to get the iPhone "later this year" via Softbank
The shortest iPhone-related press release ever comes courtesy of Japan’s Softbank Mobile Corporation.
“SOFTBANK MOBILE Corp. today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to Japan later this year.”
Previously, Orange held the record for the shortest press release, and only lost out to Softbank because it’s launching the iPhone in ten countries…
Tokyo Flash dazzles us yet again with the Scramble and Progression watches
Being a fan of Tokyo Flash’s awesome otaku cred, I couldn’t resist showing you these two new designs from the Japanese wrist-lovers’ new series for Summer, Nekura.
Scramble, the left design, lets you choose the LED colour you prefer, with blue, green, cyan, red, pink or orange all on offer, but that doesn’t mean you have to say goodbye to all the other shades, as it still rotates them occasionally. The twelve outside blocks indicate the hour, with the eleven inner blocks…
Sharp rolling out 22 AQUOS LCD TVs, because you can never have too many tellies
Sadly, Sharp isn’t releasing this truckload of AQUOS LCD TVs in Europe yet, but the Japanese obviously like choice when it comes to tellies (or Sharp thinks they do), because TWENTY-TWO models are being released in June.
The AQUOS R series (pictured) will come in 65, 52, and 46 inch screen sizes, in black or brown finish (brown… nice), 1080p, with 20,000:1 contrast ratio and 120Hz refresh rate, three HDMI ports, and just 5cm thick…
Sharp intros AQUOS Blu-ray DVRs with up to 1TB of storage
Sharp is to launch three new AQUOS combo units in Japan, featuring a Blu-ray player and Digital Video Recorder plus digital and analogue TV tuners.
Available with three hard drive sizes — 250GB, 500GB, or 1TB — they record to the hard drive in the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 format in any of three different bitrates (4.8, 8, and 12Mbps), so users can choose what quality to record at and, consequently, how much content can be stored…
Japanese man manages 780,000 porn hits in nine months – earns himself a demotion
A keen pornography fan in Japan managed to rack up a sensational 780,000 hits for various types of porn in the space of nine months – while he was at work.
The unnamed – but heroic and hard-working – Kinokawa city government employee was demoted when officials discovered his habit and examined the data logs, discovering the 780,000 offending hits. We’re not sure what definition of “hits” they’re using here, but he still clearly…
Anti-Port gamers, be warned! Paper Mario possibly ported to Nintendo DS in July!
This is exciting! Someone over at NeoGAF has claimed that Paper Mario is going to be either ported or remade for the DS in July.
It’s not entirely unbelievable either, with the N64 original selling superbly well on the Wii since it got added to the Virtual Console shelves (since release, it’s been in the US top 20 most popular downloads list), and even the remake, Super Paper Mario, for the Wii proving popular, especially in Japan.
The platform RPG-style game might…
Japanese Club Nintendo members make us green with envy over their Super Famicom controllers
Oh man! This is yet another reason to rack up in our massive list of Why We Should Move To Japan.
The Japanese members of Club Nintendo are getting a little treat this month, SNES (or Super Famicom) controllers! It’s for recreating those nostalgic moments when playing Virtual Console games like Street Fighter II and…
