Oh, I already knew that my phone wasn't going to work. Glorious Leader, on the other hand, was flogged one a Motorola V3 by his operator (either T-Mobile or O2) on the grounds that it was quad band and so would "work anywhere in the world, including Japan". Ri-ight. Once he'd stopped swearing, I explained the difference between GSM and W-CDMA. I think he should take this up with his operator, since he's clearly been missold the phone, although I'm not sure that there is a GSM handset that'll also do W-CDMA.
The rental phone I've got is a Sanyo J-SA51, rented from Vodaphone. I'm none too impressed, partly because getting the damned thing to stop using hirigana and start using romaji is a bit of a trial, but also because the interface for sending and reading text messages is completely barmy, and it isn't possible to send text messages to GSM networks from a PDC phone of this kind (this wasn't clear from the bumph on the Vodaphone stand).
Oh, it also doesn't help that the keypad is labelled in hirigana and katakana - I've no idea what the button label "クリア/マナ-" means, though it's pronounced something like "kuria/mana-" and the button behaves as a go back key to return to a higher menu.
Re: Phone coverage
Date: 2005-05-09 12:42 pm (UTC)The rental phone I've got is a Sanyo J-SA51, rented from Vodaphone. I'm none too impressed, partly because getting the damned thing to stop using hirigana and start using romaji is a bit of a trial, but also because the interface for sending and reading text messages is completely barmy, and it isn't possible to send text messages to GSM networks from a PDC phone of this kind (this wasn't clear from the bumph on the Vodaphone stand).
Oh, it also doesn't help that the keypad is labelled in hirigana and katakana - I've no idea what the button label "クリア/マナ-" means, though it's pronounced something like "kuria/mana-" and the button behaves as a go back key to return to a higher menu.