Atm I am outside Japan and am thinking of buying the S22 Ultra for a much cheaper price (at least compared to Japan). I bought my first phone in Japan so idk how unlocking sims work with foreign-bought phones. ty in advance
Edit: ty for ur comments! judging from most replies, buying outside is ok.
11 comments
Youre buying it from a provider (locked) rather than a retailer/manufacturer directly (unlocked)?
You buy unlocked/simfree. Then you don’t need to care about unlocking.
International S22 will be missing some domestic frequency bands so your signal strength may suffer.
Otherwise, it will work just fine.
Maybe better to work backward from the service provider you plan to use in Japan.
Does the service provider allow you to use your own unlocked phone? Are they going to charge you more for that “privilege”? It’s been a while since I checked, but au and docomo used to work a racket like that.
If you are going instead with a discount, BYID SIM provider, then you run a small risk of not having all the right radio bands if you bring an non-Japanese model with you, but it should otherwise work.
I used to import. but for awhile now I only buy Japanese versions because I use mobile payments.
The biggest issue of buying an android out of Japan is that suica/pasmo won’t work. Unless something changed recently, Osaifu-Keitai is only available on Android devices purchased in Japan.
All my foreign phones (Xiao Mi) have worked in Japan.
You can check here willmyphonework.net
phone sold in Japan has mandatory shutter sound when taking photo
You can, the trade off is your signal strength will be weaker and if you don’t speak Japanese some retailers will outright reject selling you just a sim (most because they don’t want to deal with you complaining if it doesn’t work as expected).
Oh and sometimes linking bus passes doesn’t work.
Never buy electronic Japan. For some reason they inflate the prices. I went to go buy an SD card and every shop was 4x higher than if I were to buy it off amazon.ca
Depending on provider the S22 is lacking two LTE bands If we’re talking about the US version but all 5G bands are covered.
As I mentioned on a different reply if you pay full price on the big 3 it would matter greatly but if you’re on a cheap mvno it shouldn’t matter to much since it will be throttled anyways.
Outside Japan : no Felica, possible limited band support, be careful with Chinese manufacturer (in case you change your mind) for volte support.