Job Discussion Forums

William. · Joined: 07 Apr 2008 Posts: 35

Does anyone know if an american-bought IPhone will work on a Japanese cell carrier in Japan?

When it was released, I thought I remember hearing that they were released in Japan prior to other countries, so if this is true I am hoping this will be possible? Not sure if I will run into any snags though, and for obvious reasons I don't want to ask my current cell carrier for info on how I can get out of paying their tremendously expensive fees for using the phone internationally.

seklarwia · Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 12:19 am Post subject:

I would have thought that any 3G/quad band phone would work out here, it was just a matter of finding a Japanese mobile company that could supply sim only packages.

More importantly you need to make sure that your phone isn't locked to the supplying company like many UK mobiles are.

Pestilence · Joined: 03 Feb 2009 Posts: 5 Location: Raleigh, NC, USA

Just make sure it's unlocked so you can use a different carrier. Lots of tutorials out there to do this.

Mr_Monkey · Joined: 11 Mar 2009 Posts: 661 Location: Kyuuuuuushuuuuuuu

Japan uses CDMA, whereas the US and Europe (in fact most of the rest of the world, I think) use GSM.

Just make sure that the phone is capable of using a CDMA network.

slodziak · Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 143 Location: Tokyo

Go to this page and you will see there is a discussion on this very topic. It seems that you should be ok.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=402787&page=39