importing a cell phone to japan and making it work in japanese, with softbank, and as a modem for laptops
i finally got fed up with the crap choices of cell phones available to consumers in japan – totally throttled by the big few comms companies so i stuck my neck out and bought an E51 for use as a cell phone and bluetooth modem for my eeepc 901. here is the saga of how i got them all to work together and use a flat rate unlimited packets option on my softbank contract. I’ve seen a few horror stories of people getting $3000 phone bills because of incorrect settings and being charged for packets at softbank’s extortionate rates. this is a disclaimer: use this advice at your own risk – i can’t guarantee anything written here…!!!! first the phone bought a nokia e51 from amazon in the USA updated the firmware via the Nokia PC Suite
JAPANESE applications
unfortunately there dosent seem to be much japanese support for newer nokia symbian os which is partly why i chose the E51. I would have loved the E52 but seems you cant get japanese for it at the moment. anyways, i use this plugin from psiloc the reader software allows you to read kanji fonts in apps psiloc japanese reader however, to write mails etc in kanji you’ll need the japanese localization: psiloc japanese there also seems to be a free japanese IME which is written by a native, but i couldnt get it to work. anyways, the page is here if you want to try with some english instructions
SMS vs MMS in Japan.
Oh. Of course they have to be difficult and use a non standard texting system – a very interesting cultural manifestation of keeping everything closed off. Anyhoo, what this means for you is that you have to do some jiggery pokery to get the phone to work correctly with Softbank.
Originally I used some of the settings provided in various forums to setup my APN, but after they sniffed my packets and saw I wasn’t using one of their phones they banned me from sending mms. Happened twice – suddenly the mms servers rejected my emails and I couldn’t send any MMS; however I could send and get sms on the Softbank phone network.
So, the solution was something a little more complicated that entering some reverse engineered passwords – I had to install a proxy server using python which spoofs the mms headers to the server and hey presto everything works a treat!
It’s a bit of a faff to get everything installed correctly – the basic instructions are here, and the original source in Japanese for the proxy is here
So, up yours Softbank!
SOFTBANK PACKET SERVICE
i’m on whiteplan – i changed onto unlimited packet plan (via their mysoftbank interface) as an optional addon to my whiteplan. i downloaded about 10MB of data the first day i got the phone and set it up, which appeared on mysoftbank page the next day as a charge for about Y12,000 – but then mysteriously vanished the same day. i assume that his means the settings work fine. if you’re an iphone user then there are loads of other sites out there with the details you need to connect to the network – be carefull the apn is different!
BLUETOOTH MODEM SETUP
installed nokia PC suite on my eeepc 901 and chose the DUN (dial up networking) option on the list of things to install. (if you wanna use just wifi then try this replacement wifi application) the dun was a bit fiddly to setup – there seems to be some optional strings you can also to send to it in essence you just:
# Pair phone and computer
# Configure phone as a Bluetooth modem
# Create network connection dialing *99#
# make sure you enter the softbank username and password from the settings above
i.e.: user: opensoftbank pass: ebMNuX1FIHg9d3DA
or you will probably get “ppp error 734″
i found a nice nokia bluetooth modem setup here which also has some optional connection strings
fat lady sings
so there you have it – my complete guide to setting up your nokia E51 on packet free contract on softbank in japan, and using it as a bluetooth modem to get on the internet. good luck!